


Atomic Heart

by Atsadi, teaberryblue



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 616/Ults/MCU Fusion, Action, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Amputation, Body Horror, Coming of Age, F/M, Genderswap, Genderswapped Tony Stark, Gore, Kidnapping, Medical Trauma, Multiple Major Character Deaths, Permanent Major Character Deaths, Political Intrigue, Politics, Romance, Seizures, Violence, dubcon, origin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:16:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atsadi/pseuds/Atsadi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/teaberryblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1944, Steve Rogers sacrificed his life to save the world. In the aftermath of what is now known as The Last War, a global government called UNITY was formed, and nations were abolished.</p><p>Under UNITY, every citizen is given a career assignment at 18. Antonia "Nia" Cerrera-Stark is nervously looking forward to her graduation from her prestigious academy and subsequent assignment, until something goes terribly wrong. Her world begins to unravel as she discovers that even her parents are keeping dark secrets-- like the unconscious man kept frozen in their cellar, a man who looks suspiciously like the long-dead Captain America.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Atsadi](http://atsadi.tumblr.com) for the amazing artwork!
> 
> This story is not yet complete but is slated for completion in January, 2016. Over 127k of it is already written but has yet to be edited.
> 
> Thanks to RendingRosencrantz, LetsCallMeLily, and Atsadi for beta help. Also thanks to TheLiterator, Sineala, Kiyaar and Nostalgicatsea for assistance with narrative decisions.
> 
> See the END NOTES for more details about the warnings/ratings if you are concerned about any of them. You can also email me at at teaberryblue at gmail dot com if you want to know about anything in detail/know which parts to skip.

It was 6:48 in the morning.

Nia sat in front of the mirror in her bedroom, fully dressed, hands on her knees, her heart thrumming in her chest like wingbeats. She tapped her foot nervously, looking herself over. 

She remembered watching the graduates before her walk every year, in their rows of smart uniforms up to the podium to get their certificates and their assignments, patriotic marches piping triumphantly through the sound system. Every year, as her own graduation grew closer, it felt more real, more nerve-racking, and every year, her own vision of herself crystallized more clearly, from the time she had been a small child and the idea of graduation was something so very far-off and grown-up, when the graduates had seemed so old, so sophisticated, so tall. Now...she still felt like a child, scared and tentative, like it was too soon, too soon to be going out into the world, too soon to know what she was going to be when she grew up.

There were too many things she wanted to be, too many things and not enough time. 

She chewed her lip. It was a bad habit, one her mother had scolded her for time and time again, but it was one she couldn’t quite break herself of. At least in the privacy of her own bedroom, no one else could see. 

She willed herself to stop now, looking back into the mirror. She didn't look old. She didn't feel old. She felt like the same _kid_ she had always been. She saw a collection of her parents’ traits, jumbled together awkwardly, in a way she’d never grown into. She had her mother's hair-- dark and fine and wavy, falling into loose curls around her shoulders, her mother’s golden-brown skin and fine bone structure, and her father's sharp nose, too large for her face, and his greyish-blue eyes.

Her uniform was as clean and crisp as could be, and she sat up a little straighter, reaching for her blue cap. She always had imagined herself tall and elegant, with long legs and a tiny waist, looking just like the photographs in the pamphlets UNITY sent to all graduates. But she was still small, still had short legs and a pudgy belly in spite of her valiant attempt to do as many sit-ups as humanly possible. She felt like a child playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes. 

She felt cold; her shoulders tensed, and her stomach growled nervously. 

“I’m not ready,” Nia murmured. “I’m not.”

  
  
Art by Atsadi


	2. Graduation

When Nia was twelve, when everyone still called her Annie, her parents had split up.

It wasn’t like most divorces. Neither of them left. They didn’t stop working together, on whatever it was that happened in the laboratory with the hidden door, the one behind the bookshelf that Nia had found when she was eight but had never figured out how to gain access to. They simply weren’t married anymore. 

Howard took advantage of his newfound status to return to his notorious reputation as a womanizer, though Nia had never seen him bring another woman home, had never met a girlfriend, was fairly certain that it was all for show, because her father seemed to spend more and more time in the lab, working on his designs, presenting new weapons to the UNITY Council, making political speeches, and building new inventions. Nia barely saw her father, and when she did, it was either in the middle of a press conference, with strangers holding a microphone up to his mouth and calling him “Mr. Secretary,” or he was staggering drunk into her room and watching her, while he thought she was asleep, ambling over to her bed and whispering goodnight, pulling the covers up a little higher around her neck.

It was the only time he ever showed affection. But she knew that he spent his nights alone.

Maria barely changed. She’d always been too focused on her work; if she weren’t taking double shifts at the hospital, she was writing an article, doing research, building prototypes, jetting off on some philanthropic mission, vanishing for weeks, doing who-knows what, who knows-where. 

They kept living in the same house, the huge house on Long Island Sound that Howard called “imposing” and Maria called “oppressive.” But it was clear something had happened, and Nia didn’t know what. People didn’t tell children those kinds of things.

What she did know was that they had stopped speaking-- at least, they’d stopped speaking around her-- and they avoided being in the same place, if they could. They split the house in two, right down the middle, with a dividing line painted in silver down the center of the dining room floor. 

Nia had a room on both sides of the line. Every Sunday night, she would walk to the dining room with one parent, hug them goodbye (stiffly, if it was Howard), and watch them walk out the door. Jarvis, Howard’s driver, would wait with her for the other parent to show. Then she would cross the line and live with the other parent for the next week. 

That first week, before she left her own bedroom, the one she’d grown up in, on her mother’s side of the house, for the first time, Maria sat her down. 

Maria had Jarvis drive her to the hospital especially for the occasion. She had put on a dress and a nice pair of shoes, and put her hair up in a ponytail. 

There had been protesters outside the hospital, people with white picket signs, shouting. Jarvis explained that there were some people who felt that people from the Territories, the land outside UNITY Central, should be able to cross the border to receive medical care, and some people didn’t.  
“But my mother goes to them” Nia had said, then. “Why would they need to come here?” 

Her mother’s assistant, the young, freckle-faced Miss Potts, had taken her for lunch in the hospital cafeteria, and Nia had gotten to eat pizza off a plastic tray and drink chocolate milk from a paper carton. Plenty of doctors and nurses and other strange adults she didn’t recognize had come up to her and asked if she was Dr. Cerrera’s daughter, told her they’d seen her on television, asked her how old she was, and generally tried to make small talk, before Miss Potts had taken her back upstairs and buzzed her into her mother’s office. 

The office was slick, all translucent, milk-white glass and smooth metal surfaces, silver and gleaming. It was neat as a pin, and Nia had sat upright in the leather-and-chrome chair that faced her mother’s desk. 

“Annie,” Maria had said, looking Nia over with an uncertain look, as if she were trying to gauge how much her daughter could understand, intellectually. “There are going to be some big changes in your life.”

“I’m going to live in the other side of the house,” Nia had answered, a little bit irritated that she’d been dragged all the way to the hospital for this, and had dressed up and everything. “I’ll see you in a week.” She had thought bitterly that sometimes she’d gone much longer without seeing her mother, when her mother ran away to some far-off Territory to practice medicine in refugee camps, but by twelve, she knew enough not to say so to Maria’s face, even if she had sometimes felt a little bit like her mother spent more time caring about other people’s kids than she did about Nia.

“You’re also starting Academy in a few weeks,” Maria had answered, clasping her hands in front of her on the desk. “School is going to get harder. They’re going to start preparing you for your career. Have you thought about what you want to do?” 

“No,” Nia had answered, honestly. There were too many things she liked, too many things she was good at, and the idea of picking just one had always left her cold, even though she knew it would happen, someday. 

Her mother had looked a little sad at that. “Annie,” she’d said. “Your entire life, people are going to judge you. They’re going to say you don’t deserve what you have, they’re going to accuse you of getting where you are by cheating your way, by doing things you would never do, they’re going to underestimate your intelligence.” 

Nia had rolled her eyes. 

“Because,” Maria had said, “you’re a woman. And a woman from the Territories, at that.” 

“Is this a feminism talk?” Nia had asked, squinting at her mother. 

“It’s just the truth,” Maria had answered. 

Maria had said some other things to her, and Nia had bobbed her head when she thought it was best to acknowledge what Maria was saying, and had gone home, and moved into her new bedroom. 

It had been almost exactly like her bedroom in the other half of the house-- same paint, same wallpaper, same furniture, same carpet. Even some of the same tchotchkes and toys and books. Her clothing had been moved over from one side of the house to the other while she had been at the hospital, and the few belongings that couldn’t be duplicated had been moved with them. 

She’d wished they hadn’t tried to make them the same. They had felt false; for one, the sunlight came through the windows at a different angle, at a different time of day. It had felt as if she were on a movie set of her own bedroom-- an attempt at a faithful recreation that hadn’t quite hit the mark.

Two weeks later, and she had been about to start at the Academy. Suddenly, with the next step in her education approaching, and not looming somewhere in the distant future, she had started to become nervous about it, her chest tingling with apprehension at odd moments. 

And then, one day, when she had made the move back to her father’s side of the house, a message from Howard appeared on her holoscreen. 

It hadn’t sounded parental at all, but that was to be expected from Howard. Nia still sometimes wondered about how, exactly, Howard had managed to become a parent, or whether he’d actually wanted a child in the first place. It instructed her to meet him in his office.

She had gone down to his office, the one that was in the house, the room with high ceilings and dark wood paneling, shelves upon shelves of books, and nearly every surface covered high in a mess of papers. She had sat down in the big, squishy chair that faced his desk, wearing the same slacks and blouse she’d worn all day, in stocking-feet, and waited for him.

She had peered at the newspaper on his desk; the cover story was about an execution, about a couple named Wendell and Heather Rand who had been accused of treason and conspiracy against UNITY. They had supposedly been transporting information to the Territories, though Nia had no idea what that meant, and they had apparently overstayed visas, been unaccounted for, supposedly had been seen conspiring with enemies of UNITY. 

They were dead, now, but Nia had been unsettled by their smiling faces. They had looked like ordinary, happy people, not traitors or terrorists.

She had put the paper back on Howard’s desk.

And waited. 

And waited.

When Howard still hadn’t shown, she had pulled down a book from his shelf, a book of history from before UNITY had been assembled, from the Last War, and thumbed through it, reading about the world before UNITY, a world with hundreds of countries and people who spoke different languages, different rulers and forms of government, different militaries that fought each other, instead of a single military committed to eradicating terrorism. 

There had been different flags, different uniforms, not an entire planet of people dressed in the same blue. 

She had run a finger over the picture of flag that would have represented her, in New York, the red and white stripes, the tiny white stars on a blue field. It had been adapted, of course, into the white-and-blue of the UNITY flag, but this was something different, something that looked like the uniform Captain America wore in all the artwork of the Last War. She had tapped a finger to her forehead, imagined a A emblazoned there.

It had been popular, she knew, in the early days postwar, to get an A-mark tattooed there, and there were still some men who had them, pale marks in white ink. But the gesture of gratitude lost popularity after the United States had been dissolved, and now it was considered quaint.

She read about the Last War, about the Nazis, about how the Allies decided that they had to keep such a terrible evil from surfacing again. She read about how, thanks to Captain America, the Allies had captured weapons from the shadow organization called Hydra, how they’d convinced the rest of the world to form the global UNITY state, how UNITY had been structured to include UNITY and its territories, the old Allied nations given privileged status for keeping the Nazis from their reign of terror.

She had gotten tired of waiting. It was just like Howard, to call her to meet with him and then vanish, and she supposed he would call her back when he wanted to speak. She had been trying to decide how to wear her hair on the first day of her Academy lessons. Regulations for Academy dictated her clothing-- blue trousers, blue shirt, brown boots, a single star on her shoulder to designate her class year-- and she was grateful, as fashion was something she'd never quite understood, but her hair was her own problem. 

She had left his office just in time to hear the squeal of the hinges on the secret door behind the bookcase in the dining room. Fearful of being caught, not wanting her father to know she knew about the secret door, she'd hid herself in the doorway to his office. 

"No, Maria," she had heard her father say. "We can't."

"She deserves to know," Maria had fired back, and Nia had heard the anger in her voice-- the passionate, burning tone that Maria used when she was fiercely angry. 

"But what if we never--" Howard had started.

"It's been years, Howie," Maria had answered, cutting him off before he could finish. "We could all use some closure."

There had been a softness in Maria's voice, something Nia had rarely heard, the tone she used with very young patients, and it had struck Nia unexpectedly, with a feeling of melancholy, to hear her mother talk so lovingly to her father. She had felt angry at her parents, inexplicable ire boiling up in her chest, and tears pricking her eyes, and then anger at herself for being angry with them, and she hadn't been able to understand why.

"I'll think about it," Howard had said, sounding defeated.

She had wondered if they had been talking about her-- she had supposed it had to be her; who else could it be, and what could they be keeping from her? A lot, she had assumed. There was the obvious secret of the room behind the bookshelves. She knew that her father dealt with all kinds of secrets as Secretary of Technology. 

There was really very little she would have put past them if she thought about it. The only reason she was certain she wasn't adopted was because Maria had taught her about the human genome by comparing their DNA, showing her the photographs of bright spots on dark agar, the places where Nia's genetics matched Maria's, and where they matched Howard's. But there weren't too many other secrets that either of them could be keeping. 

Howard's footsteps had padded over the carpet in the hall, and Nia had had no choice but to return to his office, lest she be spotted leaving, lest Howard discover that she'd been listening in. 

She had swung herself back into the chair just as Howard's silhouette appeared in the doorway.

"You're here," Howard had observed. 

She had turned and looked at him, standing with one hand on the doorframe, looking somehow sad. He was a war hero, one of the most powerful men in UNITY, but Nia had watched, over the course of her young life, as he'd grown tired, diminished even, from the strong, dashing figure he'd cut when she had been a tiny girl, and he had always been out of reach, a man she knew more from the television and the radio than from playtimes or family outings.

"You asked me to come down," she had reminded him. 

"I thought you would have left by now," Howard had admitted. 

"I can leave," she had answered, but she had given him a sharp look that she had learned from her mother, the one Maria always wore when she was disappointed.

"You might as well stay," Howard had said, dismissively, but Nia had known the dismissiveness was put-on, a reaction to her impersonation of her mother.

He had walked over to the desk and looked frustratedly at the papers strewn about, before giving up and taking his seat. 

"You're starting at Academy soon," he had said.

Nia had nodded, and clasped her hands between her knees anxiously as she realized it was going to be that kind of talk. 

Howard had tapped at the desk, the. Looked at her, his brow furrowed. "Do you know what you want to study?"

Nia had shaken her head. 

"Hm. You understand that they're going to want you to specialize?" Howard had asked.

"I know," Nia had answered. "But I can't decide. I like everything." 

Howard had raised an eyebrow at her. “Everything?”

“Everything,” Nia had replied. “I like math and physics and history and chemistry and biology and art and…” She had tried to think of a subject she _didn’t_ like. “Everything.” 

Howard had been quiet, looking at Nia with a skeptical gaze, but then he had nodded. “Well,” he had said, “whatever you choose, people are going to judge you. They’re going to say you don’t deserve what you have, they’re going to accuse you of getting where you are by cheating your way, by doing things you would never do, they’re going to underestimate your intelligence.” 

This time, Nia had rolled her eyes again, but she had answered her father. “I know,” she said. “I know, I know. It’s because I’m a woman.” 

Howard had frowned. “No,” he had replied. “It’s because you’re a Stark.” 

Nia had sat very silent and still, and she hadn’t quite been able to explain the way her forearms had tingled, why she had felt cold all over.

She understood it now, better than she had at twelve. But she had begun to understand where the cracks had come from, why her parents weren’t meant to be married. There they were, seemingly so similar, nearly identical, right up until that last sentence, where it turned out that their perspectives were entirely opposite. 

And she’d gotten older, and watched as her father invented weapons that let UNITY hunt out dissidents, the last traces of Hydra, hiding in caves, or the groups that had appeared since the Last War, dissidents like the Ten Rings and the January Rebels, who opposed the global government...and then watched Maria, never far behind, risking her life to save people who wanted her dead, practicing medicine in places that barely had running water, building prosthetic limbs and organs where Howard built bombs and guns. They were both inventors, each one of the greatest minds of their age, but Howard’s inventions visited destruction wherever he went, in the name of maintaining order, and Maria’s inventions healed, mended, mitigated all the chaos that was an ironic byproduct of Howard’s way of keeping order.

Now, not quite eighteen, she put her cap on her head, using bobby pins to affix it-- not perfectly straight, but a little to one side, a little bit jaunty, a little cavalier. She smoothed the front of her jacket. There was a wide, blank space on the placket, where her star would go, the star that signified that she had graduated and become a full-fledged member of UNITY.

She touched a finger to the star, then looked in the mirror again. Her hands were trembling; it was almost time to go. 

With a deep breath, Nia got up and walked out of her bedroom. She stopped at the door, and looked back at it-- at her pile of messy blankets on her bed, at the half-assembled robotic arm on her dresser, at the prosthetic heart schematics she’d been looking over for her mother, at the trail of hardware strewn across the carpet. She ran her thumb over the bandage on her index finger from the little soldering iron burn she’d given herself the night before, building a model of her mother’s design. She hadn’t finished it, yet. She wasn’t sure when she was going to. It lay on the desk in pieces, the chambers of the heart open to the elements. 

“Okay,” she said. ‘Okay, Nia, you get to come back tonight. Nobody’s assignments send them out _immediately_.” But her stomach was growling, and there was a lump in her chest. She clenched her hands into fists, focusing on the pressure of her fingers against her palms, as she walked down the hall from her bedroom to the balcony, down the stairs, and into the dining room, where her parents had agreed, for the special occasion, to meet her together.

“Toni?” said a familiar voice, as she crossed the threshold. 

A familiar voice that was definitely _not_ her parents. She winced at the nickname she’d stopped using two years ago. 

“Sorry,” said Uncle Obie, as he pressed a hand to his forehead. “Sorry, sorry-- It feels like I’ve only just remembered not to call you ‘Annie,’ and it’s...Nia, now, isn’t it?” 

He wasn’t actually her uncle. He was her father’s partner; the one who had the head for business and politics so that Howard could stick to the important work of inventing. A good ten years younger than her father, he’d been young when the Last War ended, and he’d always just seemed to _understand_ better than her parents had. Then again, he also took time to ask her questions, to listen to her. 

Nia nodded. “Where--” 

“They’ve had an emergency,” Uncle Obie explained, as he smoothed the sleeves of his suit-- he looked smart, even out of uniform, in tailored navy, a star-shaped tie tack pinning down his blood-red necktie. “Howie asked me to ride over with you and Jarvis. I’ll--”

Nia silently chastised herself for ever believing that her parents would make it to graduation. “Is everything okay?” she asked. She could feel her face getting hot, but she tried to sound calm, casual, as if it didn’t upset her that her parents couldn’t be present on the most important day of her life. 

Obie gave her an apologetic look, and patted her on the shoulder. “Fine. They promised they’d get to graduation before you get your assignment.” 

“Great,” Nia muttered. 

She got into the backseat of the car, Howard’s fancy State car with the UNITY emblem emblazoned on the sides. She thought it was a little ostentatious for graduation, but it was just the sort of thing Howard would do. Jarvis greeted her warmly and told her that she looked very grown-up, and she felt a lump at the back of her throat, and murmured thank you. 

“Are you ready?” Obie asked, after the car pulled out of the driveway.

Nia gave him a pained look. “No,” she replied. 

Uncle Obie was personable, affectionate, understanding where her parents never had been. Now, he gave her a wry half-smile. “How was your exit interview?” 

Nia slumped back, as if she could shrink into the leather seats of the fancy car. “Fine,” she answered. She tried to sound nonchalant, but it came out hollow. 

“Really?” asked Obie. “Does that mean you didn’t make up your mind, after all?” 

Nia shook her head. “I _couldn’t_ , Obie.” She spoke to the window, not to him, and she scrunched up her face as she inspected her reflection. 

“They’ll choose for you, you know,” Obie said, frowning. 

“It’s easier,” Nia answered with a shrug. “The Academy’ll assign me wherever they think I belong. It won’t be choosing-- choosing-- between--” 

“Your parents,” Obie finished. 

It was a relief, to hear him say it, in his reassuring, kind tone, and he reached over and patted her shoulder, and she straightened up a little bit. It was easier, certainly, than saying it herself, even if she still didn’t want to admit it. 

“Yeah,” she said, finally meeting his gaze. “You know how they are. It’d just be more fuel for the fire. They both desperately want me to pick _them_. They see me choosing a career as choosing between them.”

“Howard wants you with us,” Obie admitted. “He knows how smart you are. He may not always show it, but he...he respects your intelligence.” 

“Yeah, that makes up for all the hugs I didn’t get as a child,” Nia retorted, surprising herself with her anger. “If he respects me, he’d be at graduation.” 

“He’ll be there,” Obie said, always more optimistic than Nia. “He didn’t want to pressure you, to choose engineering, To-- Nia,” Obie caught himself just in time to manage the right nickname. “But he _does_ want you there. Not just because he thinks you’re talented. It’s the best place...strategically. Politically. I know there are plenty of people who would feel much safer knowing that there’s another Stark to take over from your father.” 

“And Maria wants me to go save babies with her,” Nia answered, shrugging. “Either way, somebody’s going to be disappointed. But I’d rather it be because my aptitude lies elsewhere than because I had to disappoint them.” 

“Your mother is an extraordinarily talented woman,” Obie agreed. “The leaps and bounds she’s made in organ transplant technology, in prosthetics...it’s just as incredible as Howard’s work. I think you’ll make your parents proud whichever direction you go.” 

Nia gave Obie a watery smile. “I’m half-hoping they give me something like...farming. Just to avoid it all. I just don’t have any idea what they’ll do.” 

As the car rolled into the Academy drive, she was greeted by classmates who were much more certain about their futures. 

“You didn’t give them _anything_?” Jim asked, as he slung a warm, brown arm over Nia’s shoulders, whistling low, his dark eyes dancing and bright. He had a fresh haircut, his tight, soft black curls shorn off, his cap propped cockily on his head. “You didn’t even tell them what a shit cook you are?” 

“I feel like that’s probably a matter of public record,” Carol said cheerily. Her hair was pinned back perfectly, shining gold in the sun, her cap under one arm. 

“Hey,” Nia objected, but she knew it was true. She’d barely seen the inside of the kitchen at home; she knew how to work a toaster, and she had a vague idea of how to turn a can of tuna into tuna salad, but cooking was hardly her area of expertise. "They're not going to make me a cook." 

"Leadership," said a familiar voice behind them, and Ty's arms slid around her waist, wriggling her away from Jim. "They're going to make you Director someday." 

She leaned back against Ty's chest for a moment before she remembered herself and pulled back, standing beside him more properly, though she offered him a hand. "I'd make a terrible leader, Captain," she retorted, sticking her tongue out. 

Ty struck a pose, saluting and flexing his muscles at the same time, and he shot her a conspiratorial look, though Nia wasn't sure what the conspiracy was. 

He _did_ look impossibly like the statue of Captain America outside the Academy, though: tall and athletic, with a twinkle in his eye and softly curling yellow hair that was just a touch longer than regulation, but not so long that he couldn't charm his way out of an infraction. 

He looked even _more_ Captain-America-like today, in his freshly-pressed uniform, the blank star-shaped space over his heart waiting, like all of them, for the silver stars that would mean they were Graduates.

It was times like these, looking at all her beautiful friends-- at her beautiful _boyfriend_ \-- that Nia felt at her most insecure. Four years after Jim had sought her out to invite her to a party because she was ”the smartest person in school," she was still surprised that their friendships had lasted right up till graduation. 

"Til the final reckoning," Jim had joked, when she'd confided this to him. "We're good, Nee. You know we’ll be friends even when me and Carol are in the air, right?” 

And she had gotten a lump in her throat, and nodded. 

When she’d met Jim, she’d been abjectly in love with him for two weeks, two heart-wrenching weeks, before she found out he already _had_ a girlfriend, a perfect, tall, blonde girlfriend with muscles like a wrestler and a face like a fashion model. It had been her first real crush, her first crush on a real boy who wasn’t fictional or dead, and she’d sworn to hate Carol for as long as she lived. But hating Carol was impossible, when Carol called Nia up to go to the movies with her, when Carol begged her to join her for lunch, just the two of them, when Carol gave her a dress that ‘didn’t fit anymore,’ the kind of tight, red, dress Nia’s own parents would never have let her buy, the kind that didn’t even pretend to fit regulation. 

And then she’d slowly realized that Jim and Carol were birds of a feather-- almost literally, the way they spent all their time talking about airplane maneuvers and the latest engines. Nia could join in the engineering parts of the conversations, talk about aerodynamics and design, but _actual flying_? She didn’t know the first thing about that. 

So she’d become comfortable with the idea of the two of them, a pair, a matched set, and slowly her crush had faded, and she couldn’t think of her life without either of them in it. 

Now, here they were, that fated day, the day Jim and Carol really _were_ going up in the air. There wasn’t any question of it; everyone _knew_ what their assignments would be, that they’d be posted to the Air Force. It was a proud assignment, an elite assignment, and people had been treating them like elites for months.

Jim caught her looking at him, or looking in his direction, to be precise, her vision moving in and out of focus as she played back memories in her head. 

“Hey,” Jim said, waving his fingers in front of her face. “Hey, Nee. You okay? You know we don’t care where they put you, right? You’re still _our_ Nia.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Ty answered, wryly. “My future wife isn’t going to work sanitation or food service.” He gave her a little squeeze around the shoulders. 

Nia coughed. “Future _wife_?” she sputtered. “And maybe I want to work sanitation.” She prodded Ty in the chest. “Look at the trash I drag around with me.” 

Ty wrinkled his nose at her, and looked about to retort, when Nia heard someone call out from behind her. 

“Antonia Margaret Cerrera-Stark!” 

It was a woman’s voice, a voice she hadn’t expected to hear, but instantly recognized. She disentangled herself from Ty and went running. 

“Aunt Peggy!” 

Aunt Peggy scooped her up in both arms and whirled her around like she was still a child who weighed nothing. At least, Nia thought, at least even if neither of her parents showed, _Peggy_ would be there, Peggy who had filled in for her mother on so many occasions. It had been Peggy who’d bought her her first razor, her first package of tampons, who had taken her shopping for a stylish dress for her first formal dance. 

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Nia admitted. 

Peggy raised an eyebrow. “And miss my honorary child’s graduation?” she asked. 

“I don’t know what expect,” Nia said. “There aren’t going to be fireworks or anything.” 

“There’s money on it,” Obie said, as he walked up behind them both. He gave Peggy a kiss on the cheek, rested his hands on his hips. “Tell me you don’t read the news.” 

Nia stuck her tongue out. “I don’t read _rags_ ,” she said. “I stopped doing that after the divorce. There’s money on what?” she asked, curiously. 

“Your assignment,” answered Obie. “Everyone’s trying to guess where you’ll go.” 

“Really?” Nia asked, dubious. She was one kid. One kid who was the child of two very famous people, sure, but still, one kid. 

“I was hoping you’d enlighten me in the car,” Obie joked, jovially. “So I could place a wager.” 

Nia stuck her tongue out. “Ty thinks it’ll be leadership,” she said. “I have no _idea_. I could place my own wager and I’d be as lost as everybody else.” 

“You didn’t choose something?” Peggy asked, frowning. “What did you tell them, in your interview?” 

“I told them I liked too many things to narrow it down. I told them I was good at too many things. That I wasn’t ready to let go of any of the things I’m good at.” She frowned. “I’m not a specialist, Auntie. It’s just not who I am. I can’t _choose_. It’d be like choosing children.”

Peggy looked her over, then reached a hand up, brushing a thumb across Nia’s cheek. Her fingertip was soft, gentle. “You know they’ll make you choose, eventually, don’t you?” she asked. 

Nia bit her lip. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t do it. I’m making them choose for me.” 

“Not the Academy,” said Peggy. “Not UNITY. Not the assignments board. Your parents.” 

Nia looked back and forth between her two honorary relatives-- neither of them family by blood, but both of them here, both of them interested in what she would become, both of them aware of how important this day was. At eighteen, she couldn’t blubber at them, couldn’t tell them she wished they were her parents. 

“Well,” she said bitterly. “If they wanted to entice me, the least they could do is show up to my graduation.” 

Jarvis appeared, having parked the car and removed his chauffeur's cap, the wing on his sleeve enough to mark him as support staff to a UNITY official. Then Miss Potts showed up, prim and lovely in her white hospital dress uniform, but Nia's parents were still nowhere to be seen. She saw Jim's parents and Carol's whole family, taking their seats in the section reserved for civvies, toward the back of the amphitheater benches. The crowd was filling in, a sea of blue school uniforms at the very front, just behind the UNITY officials in their darker blues. 

"Come on," Obie offered, putting a hand to Nia's shoulder. "I'll walk you to your seat." 

Nia shrugged. "It's okay. I can walk with Ty. We sit next to each other, anyway."

It wasn't okay, but it was graduation. She was supposed to be an adult. She'd be leaving home as soon as she got her assignment, and it wasn't the first time her parents had missed something important. She sucked in a breath, straightened her cap, kissed Aunt Peggy on the cheek, and squared her shoulders, starting back for her friends. 

She hadn't walked twenty paces when a light flashed in her eyes, a strange man shoved a microphone in her face. 

"Miss Stark!" He exclaimed, loudly, loudly enough that it turned the heads of the crowd milling nearby. "Are you excited for your assignment? What do you think it'll be?"

Nia panicked. She hadn't expected this. The last time she'd been dogged by the press was when her parents were in the midst of their divorce, and that had been bad enough for UNITY to pass the Child Celebrity Protection Act, but the act had worked. It wasn't that there weren't stories about her in the news, or photos from the occasional outing, but people who wanted to interview a minor had to gain written permission first.

A large shadow swooped in; Obie's arm at her back once more, and his huge hand covering the microphone. "Are you trying to get arrested?" He asked, sounding more amused than anything. 

The reporter gritted his teeth. "Miss Stark is eighteen," he answered. "She's graduating from school. You can't deny us access anymore."

"She hasn't graduated yet," Obie pointed out. "Commencement ends at one PM. Legally, she's still off-limits to you."

Obie held a hand out. "Camera," he instructed, gesturing for the man to hand the camera over.

“Come on, man,” said a young, female reporter with pale white skin and dark hair, tugging at the photographer’s arm. “Don’t ruin it for the rest of us.” 

The photographer groaned. “Don’t be such a wet blanket, Jones.” 

But now others were snapping pictures. They'd seen her, and it was one thing to take a camera from an errant reporter (Nia thought, as Obie smashed the camera on the ground), but they couldn't stop a crowd. Nia ducked, covered her head with her hands as Obie wrenched the photographer's hand up behind his back and forced the man to his knees.

And then Ty was there, standing next to her, his smile warm and reassuring, and he clasped her hand in his.

"Leave my fiancée alone!" hHe shouted at the crowd. 

Nia froze. She couldn't breathe; it felt like her ribcage was contracting. When she tried to speak, all she did was sputter wordlessly.

“Do you know who I _am_ ” Ty demanded of the crowd. “I’m the heir to Viastone. You put her in the press; I’ll put _you_ in the press, and it won’t be pretty.” 

The crowd went silent for a moment, before a murmur ran through the people who were still standing, watching. They didn’t stop snapping photos, but now they were snapping photos of both of them, of Ty and Nia, and Nia wanted to sink into the ground. 

Obie dropped his grip on the photographer, pulled the film out of the camera and exposed it to the sunlight before he dropped the camera in the dirt and stomped on it with his heel. “ _Son_ ,” he said, giving Ty a sharp look. 

Ty looked back at Obie with a clear, guileless expression. “Sir?” he asked, lifting his head as if all he wanted was to help. 

She locked her arm through Ty’s and forcibly dragged him toward their seats, him stumbling in her wake, in spite of the fact that he was larger and stronger. 

“Are you okay?” Ty asked. 

“ _Fiancée_?” Nia managed with a snort. “Ty, what the _fuck_ are you thinking? That’s going to be in all the papers; you--” 

He gave her a hurt look. “Do you think I was _thinking_ about that?” 

She stopped walking, throwing her hands up in the air. “You? Not thinking about that? Your parents _are_ the press; there’s no one who knows how news works like you do. There’s not a single person here who doesn’t already know you’re going to get an assignment in journalism. Bullshit, you didn’t think about it.” 

“ _Sorry_ ,” Ty muttered, and he reached for her hand, pressing her on toward their seats.

They had been sitting next to each other at events since they’d begun at the Academy: Nia was S-T-A-R-K, Ty was S-T-O-N-E, though it took two years for Nia to even bother to introduce herself, and it was only then that she found out that Ty had been paying close attention to her all along. 

She supposed it was the journalist in him: he was born to it, the only child of the great defenders of the Fourth Estate, Ty had been raised by the people who had done the most to keep the press from being dismantled when UNITY came to power. There had been arguments that negative press could hurt the fledgling government, but it had been the Stones who championed the free press, even at great risk to themselves, and Ty had grown up with journalism in his blood. He knew a story when he saw one, she intrigued him, and at some point he’d confused that fascination for attraction. It was the only explanation for someone like _him_ liking someone like her-- she was small and mousy and had an overlarge, angular nose and a jaw too square for a woman, and there he was, looking like _Captain America_ , effortlessly beautiful. 

He squeezed her hand as they sat. She withdrew it, guiltily. They were surrounded by other students now, students who knew them both, students who’d spread gossip if anything was overheard. 

“Fiancée?” Nia asked again, mumbling into his ear. “Really, Ty?” 

“Are you saying you don’t want to be?” Ty murmured back. 

Nia huffed. “We’re _eighteen_ , Ty. We have four years before we’re even _allowed_.” 

His eyebrows arched up. “So, you want to?” 

Nia groaned. She took his hand back, patting it. “This isn’t the _time_ ,” she muttered. 

“Can you at least give me a straight--” 

Ty was cut off by the opening strains of the UNITY anthem, and the two of them popped out of their seats, raising their right hands in measured salutes at the flag. 

Nia mouthed the words, but didn’t dare actually try to sing; she was painfully awful at carrying a tune. Ty, of course, sang along in his light tenor. It made Nia want to roll her eyes; even his _singing_ voice was perfect. 

Graduation ceremonies were always the same. Important-sounding, droning speeches by UNITY officials to begin, followed by some student who was probably going to get assigned to public relations, and then the assignments. No one actually cared about the speeches. They were mostly propaganda. Howard had given them a few times; they’d offered him a slot this year, but he’d turned it down, saying that he thought it was in poor taste to speak when his own daughter was graduating.

For a moment, Nia imagined that maybe he had already decided not to come. She sank a little lower in her chair. Ty, glancing at her, as if he could sense her unease, squeezed her hand lightly. 

The speeches seemed interminable, but eventually the Dean of the Academy stood, the stack of Assignments all neatly stacked beside her. The first row of students stood and walked to the stage, and Nia could feel her heart skipping a beat. It was too close, too soon, she hadn’t made a choice; what if they assigned her to something _awful_? 

She straightened up, trying to look brave, and listened for the names she recognized. Sunset, from her robotics class, was assigned to, well, Robotics. Carol! Carol waved to the audience as she walked across the stage, sauntering gracefully like a fashion model. She punched the air when she was assigned to the Air Force. Jane Foster was assigned to astrophysics, which was a bit of surprise since Nia was fairly sure she’d never seen Jane actually attend any of her science classes. 

The assignments took on a rhythmic quality, the way they had in years before: name, assignment, polite applause. Name, assignment, polite applause. The Dean’s assistant would pin a silver star over each graduate’s heart, and the graduates received their envelopes with the full details on their assignments, clutching them carefully with both hands so they wouldn’t drop them-- even as UNITY tried to discourage superstition, it was considered terribly bad luck to drop your envelope, a suggestion that you weren't a match for the assignment. 

There were rarely surprises. Occasionally there was a student assigned to a skill they'd learned through an extracurricular hobby or simple proclivity and not a study-- she looked up as they announced Hogan, Harold, security, and watched the smile on the face of the large, deliberately careful, kind boy who had settled more than his fair share of campus fights over the years. 

Everyone applauded politely, and the Dean moved on to the next assignment. 

Everyone was given an assignment that seemed to suit them, and no one looked displeased. Of course, this was an elite Academy and Nia had heard that at the less prestigious schools, students didn't always expect assignments they would enjoy. There were people assigned to menial jobs, people assigned to infantry, whose lives were at much greater risk than the young officers graduating into the military from the Academy. But that didn't happen here. The Academy was made up of the best and the brightest, the smartest and most ambitious, and, of course, the most wealthy. 

The row ahead of them rose. Nia straightened up-- it was Jim's row, and he glanced back, shooting her an eager grin. She nodded, and hoped her nod looked reassuring. In reality, the closer they came to her own assignment, the more frightened she felt. She wished she'd said something in her exit interview, anything. She could get stuck with something she really hadn't wanted, or they would put her in surgery with Maria and Howard would be convinced she'd chosen it to spite him. It would all go sideways on her, and this was the rest of her life-- well, at least four years until she could appeal, after her mandatory service was complete. But appeals were rarely granted; by then, you were four years behind your peers, and there were few individuals who could catch up.

Her stomach churned; she tried to soothe herself. She was first in all her subjects, all twelve of them, after she'd petitioned the Academy to let her skip lunch and to let her take extra classes as independent studies. 

She forced herself to look at the stage while Hank Pym took his assignment in molecular biology.

Jim. Jim Rhodes. She watched Jim on the stage, the picture of supreme confidence, grinning from ear to ear. Jim sought out Carol, scanning the audience before he winked, and then Nia, shooting her a thumbs-up.

She prodded her own thumb in the air and grinned. But she felt like her smile was stretched too wide, like she was gritting her teeth down too hard. 

Jim got his Air Force assignment, just as everyone expected, and he blew a kiss at Carol, who had thrown both hands up in the air and whooped amidst all the polite applause. 

The next thing she knew, Ty was clasping her hand again, and they were on their feet, moving toward the stage. She couldn’t breathe; she was going to collapse, she just _knew_ she was going to do something terribly embarrassing, and it would be too late, she wouldn’t be protected from the press anymore, it would be in every single newspaper come morning. 

Ty seemed to sense her fear, and she suspected it was because she was holding onto his hand with a steely grip. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m with you, Nee. I’ll be right behind you.” 

Nia took a long, slow breath. Maybe she’d been too hard on him. 

The line ahead of her dwindled. She tried to breathe in patterns, she breathed out the Fibonacci series, one breath, then two breaths, then three, five, eight. 

“Stark,” called the Dean. “Antonia Margaret Cerrera-Stark.” 

Nia sucked in one final breath, and marched onto the stage. She tried to stand up straight, but she was sure she was standing too stiffly, she probably looked like a robot, her feet were probably stomping too loudly, so loudly they could be heard all the way at the farthest points of the amphitheater. 

She scanned the crowd for the front section, where the UNITY officials sat, but her parents still weren’t there. 

She walked up to the Dean, just as she’d been instructed, getting ready to shake his hand and accept her envelope. 

But he didn’t have an envelope in his hand; she must be walking too quickly. She bit her lip and slowed her gait, waiting for him to pick up her envelope. 

“No assignment,” said the Dean.

Nia stopped dead in her tracks. 

The audience went silent. There was no polite applause.

“What?” she asked. 

Someone, somewhere, snapped a photograph, and she swore under her breath. She straightened up again, tried not to let the confusion show on her face, tried to look serene. 

“No assignment,” the Dean repeated. His tone was patient, matter-of-fact, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to _not_ get assigned, as if she had merely failed to hear him. 

She looked fretfully out into the audience. Jim was staring, Carol was staring. Obie was standing in his seat, hands in fists, as if he was one breath away from starting a fistfight. Peggy was still seated, but she had a very dark look on her face. Miss Potts was walking from her seat toward the back of the amphitheater, away from the graduation. 

She looked for her parents one more time, but their seats were still vacant, no matter how hard she glared. 

Her parents weren’t there. They hadn’t come. 

“But--but everyone gets an assignment,” she said, her voice trembling. “I...I’m first in my class. In...in _twelve subjects_. You can’t just...can’t just not assign me.” 

The only thing she heard from the audience was nervous laughter-- and then, suddenly, a shout. 

“Hey!” 

Nia shut her eyes. Jim. She didn’t have to look at him, she knew his voice, knew he was standing in his seat. 

“Hey!” Jim shouted again. “You heard her! You can’t--” 

“Miss, you’ll have to leave the stage now,” said the Dean. “May I wish you congratulations on your graduation?” 

Nia saw the security guards, in their black uniforms, start toward the stage. 

She brushed tears from her eyes, hiccoughed loudly, and hid her face in her hands; too many people were taking pictures. 

In her head, she ran through so many things she could say. She could demand to know why she’d been refused an assignment. She could detail her impressive academic career. She could go on one of Howard’s lectures about patriotic duty or one of Maria’s lectures about the failure of the system. 

Instead, she glared at the Dean, and said, “Fuck you.” 

She ran off the stage in tears, sat down on the ground as soon as she’d descended the stairs, and began to sob. 

It took her a few moments to realize that there was a fuss behind her, onstage, where Ty was standing, hands on his hips, facing off with the Dean. 

“Young man,” said the Dean. “You are legally obligated to accept your assignment.” 

“Give my assignment to Nia,” Ty retorted. “You didn’t seem to care about her obligation.” 

“Ty!” Nia shouted, jumping to her feet. “Don’t--” 

“Mister Stone,” said the Dean. “If you fail to cooperate, you _will_ be arrested.” 

She could see Ty’s jaw harden. “Fine,” Ty snapped. 

The Dean shook his head and looked down at the envelope. “Tiberius Stone,” he recited. “Public Relations.” 

The expression on Ty’s face, confident and proud and raging, fell away, and his brow furrowed. He looked worried, frightened. “Public Relations?” he repeated. 

The Dean put a hand to his forehead and held out the envelope. “Public Relations.” 

Ty stepped forward warily, as if he were talking into a trap. He took the envelope, read the outside of it. “Public Relations...for the _government_?” 

The audience was still quiet. 

“Do you _know_ who my _parents_ are?” Ty asked, incredulous. 

“Congratulations and best wishes,” said the Dean.

Ty’s expression went cold, stony, and he looked back and forth from the envelope to the Dean once more before he waved away the woman with the stars and _stomped_ off the stage. 

He dropped onto the ground beside NIa, threw the envelope down into the grass. 

“I almost ripped it up,” he said. “I almost--” 

“You don’t need to get yourself arrested,” Nia said quietly. 

The ceremony continued around them, the rest of the graduates marching down the stairs just in front of them, and a few moments later, it was over, and they were playing the recessional march. 

Nia sat on the grass, numb, unmoving. 

Ty pulled his cap from his head. “I should find my parents,” he said. “There has to be something we can do; we-- if they think for one second I’m going to protect their corrupt bureaucratic asses--” 

“My father isn’t corrupt,” Nia answered, her jaw feeling very stiff. It was hard to talk; her voice sounded stilted.

“You know what I mean,” Ty said. “They did this on purpose; they hate my family; they deliberately gave me an assignment that would pit me against-- “

Nia shrieked. She couldn’t help it; she didn’t plan to do it; the high-pitched, anguished noise escaped from her throat, shrill and harsh and awful. 

“Nee?” Ty asked, looking almost terrified. 

Before she knew it, she was on her feet, her hands curled into fists. “I didn’t _get_ an assignment,” she snapped. “Do you know _how many people_ in the _history_ of UNITY haven’t gotten assignments?!” 

Ty was quiet, his face pale. 

“ _One_ ,” Nia blurted. “Me.” 

She whirled away, telling herself she didn’t care if he followed. She wanted Jim. And Carol. And Obie. Obie would know what to do, she told herself. She wondered if her parents had known about this, if _Peggy_ had known about this, if they had all let her get up there and make a fool of herself. 

The amphitheater was slowly emptying of people. Jim and Carol would have marched out with the rest of the graduates, whether or not they had wanted to. Unlike Ty, they had the good sense not to make a scene. 

She scanned the heads of the retreating guests for someone she recognized, anyone. It was easy enough to spot Miss Potts’ bright red hair, and she started after her mother’s assistant at a jog. 

She didn’t know if Ty was following; she didn’t look back, just kept her eyes on that unmistakeable patch of copper, so intently that she almost smacked into a person.

With a camera. 

The camera shutter snapped even as dug her feet into the ground to stop from careening into the photographer. The heel of her boot caught on a rock, and she stumbled, steadying herself on a nearby chair, though her cap flew off her head and one of the pins holding her hair in place came loose, leaving her with hair in one eye. 

“Would you _stop_?” she said, scowling at the photographer, who was still clicking away as she tried to sort out the mess of her hair. 

“Sorry,” said the man. “I’ve got an _assignment_. Like most people.” 

She punched him in the face.


	3. In the Basement

“Your parents are here,” the Peace Officer said. She wasn’t much older than Nia herself, probably still in the middle of her Service Assignment, tall and lanky, with dark skin and a pretty halo of black curls that were definitely not regulation, but also, Nia thought, well worth the infraction. 

Nia felt a jolt at the news, and sat up straight. “My parents?” she asked. She rubbed at her eyes.

“Yeah,” said the Peace Officer, and she unlocked the door to the little jail cell. “Come on, kiddo, you’re free to go.” She shot Nia a grin. “Unless you want to stay here all night? Pretty comfy, huh?” 

Nia made a face, and pushed herself off the bench. “Plush accommodations; I’ll be sure to give it four stars,” she answered. 

The Peace Officer looked thoughtfully at her. “Look,” she said. “I probably would have done the same thing in your shoes. They’re assholes, all of them, and you don’t seem like the spoiled brat they make you out to be.” 

“Thanks,” Nia said. She ran a hand through her hair, smoothed out her uniform. She looked down at it, suddenly all too aware of the lack of a star on her placket. She had graduated; she should have a star. “I think.” 

“Next time, call us first?” said the Peace Officer. “Legally, they can take your photo, but if they’re _harassing_ you, that’s another story. Actually…” 

She pulled out a slim silver case, took out a white card. “Call _me_. That’s a direct line. This has my badge number on it and everything.” 

Nia took the card, nodding, and read it over before sliding it into her pocket. “Thanks, Officer Knight.” 

Officer Knight led Nia out to the main office of the Peace Station. Howard and Maria were _both_ standing there, stern-faced and unreadable. Howard was in his full dress uniform; Maria was in a grey suit with pearls-- both looking very much like they’d dressed to attend a formal event. 

Nia bit her lip. 

“The last time Miss Stark received an infraction was six years ago,” Officer Knight said, clearing her throat, when no one else spoke. “That means you’re lucky,” she said to Nia. “This isn’t even going to show up on your security reports.” 

“It _is_ , however, going to show up in the newspapers,” said Maria, though she didn’t look angry. She put a hand to Nia’s shoulder. Nia glared at the floor and shrugged her off. 

“I lost my cap,” she muttered. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, we can replace a _cap_ ,” Howard said. He saluted Officer Knight and started out the door. 

The car ride home was silent. Howard drove; Maria sat in the front. Nia sat in the back seat, crumpled up against herself, keeping her head low so she wouldn’t accidentally make eye contact with anyone in the rearview mirror. 

Howard cleared his throat a few times; Nia assumed that meant he wanted to prod her into speaking, or wanted Maria to speak, but neither of them did. 

“Ty’s having a party on the beach,” Nia said, finally, as Howard pulled the car into the drive. 

“You are _not_ going to any parties.” said Howard. He parked the car outside the garage and opened his door. 

“I said I’d go.” Nia crossed her arms over her chest and sat, still, in the backseat of the car. 

“Well, circumstances have changed,” Maria said. 

“Oh, so this is a family thing, now?” Nia asked sullenly. “Not showing up to things we’ve promised to be at?” 

“ _Antonia_ ,” Howard implored, rubbing his forehead. “Get out of the car. We need to talk.” 

Nia growled. “Yeah,” she snapped, as she opened the door of the car and slammed it shut as loudly as she could. “Yeah, we _do_ , because I’m fucking _used_ to neither of you being there, but this was the worst day of my _life_ and the least you could have done was _showed_.” 

“Nia,” Maria said softly. 

Nia gritted her teeth. “That goes for both of you,” she said, clenching her hands into fists. She waved a hand at Howard. “At least I expect him to be unreliable. I figured, fine, maybe Howard’s fucking drunk again, maybe he lost track of time, maybe he’s built a rocketship and fucking _gone to Mars_ , but you’re not even in _surgery_.” 

She threw her hands up, then whirled on Howard. “And you’re-- you _are_ the fucking government. Why would you let them do this to me?! Do you-- how could you let me go up there and-- you had to have known, you _had to_.” 

“Nia,” Maria said. “We’re outdoors. You’re screaming.” 

“I’m _not screaming_ ,” Nia answered, though she was suddenly very aware of just how loudly she’d been shouting. 

“Come inside,” said Maria. 

Nia looked to Howard. He was looking away, up at the trees, a sort of lost expression on his face, as if he were searching for something he couldn’t see. She watched him, over her shoulder, as she followed her mother inside. 

The dining room-- what had been a dining room, when she was twelve-- wasn’t a dining room anymore. Years of family meetings and negotiations had necessitated that the one shared space in the house-- apart from the foyer and the secret room she wasn’t supposed to know about-- had become more of a conversational space, and there were now sofas and chairs and a wide coffee table. 

Howard walked to the whiskey decanter on the sideboard, reached for the top, then frowned back at Nia, and dropped his hand, coming to the sofa. He took off his dress coat and cap, the officer’s cap with its tiny wings etched over either ear, and sat, crossing one leg over his knee. He still didn’t make eye contact, still seemed a bit unfocused, and Nia realized he was mouthing something, maybe whispering to himself. 

She sat down on the other sofa, clasping her hands between her knees. She realized, belatedly, that she could take off her jacket, too, and she tossed it over the side of the sofa, breathing in, feeling less stuffy in her plain white tee shirt. 

Maria waited until everyone else was seated before taking a chair. “Nia,” she started again, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. “Your assignment.” 

“Or lack thereof?” Nia asked. “Do you...I don’t understand,” she said. “I--” her voice cracked, she winced as she realized she was about to start crying again. “I worked _so hard_.”  
The tears erupted, spilling down her cheeks, and she wiped her eyes on her bare arm, the sticky tracks of saltwater glistening on her skin. 

And now Howard’s gaze finally met hers-- her own vision was blurred by tears, and she was squinting at him, but she could tell his eyes were on her. 

“How could you let them do this?” Nia asked. “ _Why_?” 

Howard took a breath, and swallowed so loudly that she could hear it. “Because I did it,” he said. “I made the call.” 

Nia felt like a fist had punched her in the chest. “Wh--” Her voice quavered. “What? _What_?” 

She went from uncomprehending to angry in a matter of moments. Her hands felt hot; her cheeks flushed. She pressed her fists into her thighs. 

“What the _hell_ , Howard?!” she shouted, and she got up from the sofa, heading for Maria’s side of the house. “There was one fucking part of my life you hadn’t ruined, so you had to go for that, _too_?!” 

“I--” Howard didn’t move, but Maria did, rising from her seat with a regal air, snatching Nia’s arm before she made it to the door. 

“You will _listen_ to your father,” Maria said, and there was real rage in her voice, in the way her eyes shone. “Sit. Down.” 

Nia went stiff, her shoulders twitching. She shuffled her way back to the sofa, her feet feeling like lead weights. 

“I’m sitting,” she said. Her voice came out scratchy, low, unnerving. 

Howard looked at her for a long time, but didn’t say anything. 

“Well?” Nia asked. 

Howard looked up at Maria, his eyes pleading. 

“We missed your graduation,” Maria said. “Because we were trying to stop it.” 

Nia’s stomach lurched, and she realized she hadn’t eaten. Nothing, all day. She’d been too nervous in the morning, and then she missed lunch because she’d conveniently been hauled off to jail, and now it was nearing six in the evening and she somehow, somehow had made it this long without fainting.

Just thinking it made her feel lightheaded. Or maybe it was whatever her parents meant by-- 

“Stop it?” she asked. “You were trying to stop them from not assigning me? Or…” She sniffled, shook her head, looked from one parent to the other. 

“No,” said Maria. “We succeeded in removing your assignment.”

“We deleted every instance of it,” Howard added. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Not Ty, not Jim, not any of your friends.”

“Not Obie?” Nia asked. Surely Obie knew, if he was the one who had taken her to graduation. 

“Not Obie. Not Peggy,” answered Maria. “No one. It’s absolutely imperative.” 

“Why?” Nia asked. She shivered, a chill running down her spine, and she reached up, grabbing at her hair, twisting it around her hand. 

“They were going to assign you to work for me,” Howard said. 

Nia blinked. “But you-- I thought that’s what you _wanted_.” She tugged at her own hair a little too hard. “Ow.” 

“Not on that particular project,” Howard answered. That was all he said. He shut his mouth, looking stony and severe. 

“We’ll find something else for you to do,” said Maria. “You can work with both of us.” 

Nia swallowed. “What?” she asked. Her voice was too quiet, her heart was beating too quickly, her breath was too shallow. “What was the project?” 

Howard shook his head. “Not today,” he answered. 

“But--” Nia was trembling in her seat; she wanted to know; _needed_ to know, what her father had been working on, what was so dangerous, that he didn’t want her to be part of it. 

“We _promise_ you, Nia,” said Maria. “We’ll tell you.”

Nia rolled her eyes. “Is this one of those ‘when I’m ready’ things?” 

Maria shook her head, pinched the bridge of her nose. “You are more than ready,” she said. “It isn’t you.” She sighed, then got up from her chair. “Come on, love,” she said. “You must be starving. Let’s go fix a sandwich.” 

Nia got up, and then looked to Howard, still sitting in his chair, slumping, looking down at the floor, his expression drawn.

“I want you both,” she said, abruptly, and the revelation surprised her even as she said it. “Both. In the same kitchen.” 

They ate cold bologna sandwiches on rye bread with mustard, before Howard, looking uneasy in Maria’s half of the house, excused himself and shuffled off. He looked back at Nia before he walked out the door, but didn’t say anything, just stared at her for a long moment. 

“Are you going to be okay?” Maria asked, when Howard was out of earshot. 

Nia winced. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “You…” she swallowed. She didn’t want to cry again; she’d cried too much today, but she felt weak. “I spent my entire life preparing for one thing. I did the best I could; I did the best _anybody_ could.” She bit her lip. “I was better than _everyone_.” 

She drummed her fingers on the table. “And then it turned out I was working for nothing. And it’s never going to happen.” 

She sucked in a breath. “Was it the right decision?” she asked. “What you and Howard did? This isn’t just him trying to protect me like I’m still a baby, is it?” 

“He’s trying to protect you,” Maria admitted. “But not because he thinks you’re a baby.”

“Can’t you give me a hint?” Nia asked, and she bit down on her lip, then reached for her glass of ice water. 

Maria got up from the table, leaned over, and kissed Nia on the cheek. “No,” she said. “But I love you.” 

Nia washed the dishes-- a task usually left for Jarvis, but she was feeling jumpy-- and went upstairs to her room. She took a long shower, hoping the hot water would make her feel better, but it just made her feel overheated and a little bit raw as she sloughed off old skin. She twisted her hair to wring it out and tied it up into a knot before climbing into her pajamas. 

But she was still jumpy, and it was still early-- only eight o’clock, there were three hours left to curfew now that Academy was over for the summer, and it struck her, suddenly, very hard, that her friends would be leaving. 

She put on ordinary civilian clothes: a pair of bluejeans and a tee shirt, not bothering to dress up or look particularly nice, and tiptoed down the back service stairs and out the kitchen entrance. 

Her friends would be on the beach; she knew that much. It was a long walk from the house, but she was full of nervous energy, and the summer air was warm but comfortable, a cool breeze blowing in off the coastline. 

She heard a loud crack-- and then saw glimmering colored lights in the sky above the water. Fireworks. She hastened her footsteps as she neared the beach, saw the bright, dancing flames of a bonfire and the shadowy silhouettes of teenagers drinking contraband beer from glass bottles and roasting marshmallows. 

“Nee!” came the first shout, and a few heads looked up-- no, more than a few. Nearly all the figures on the beach stopped what they were doing and turned to see her. 

But it was Carol who came running like a racehorse across the sand, kicking up clouds behind her, in impossibly high red espadrilles that were _definitely_ against regulation, even for off-hours clothing, and white shorts that were just as likely to earn her a infraction if someone saw them. 

“Nee!” she squealed again, and threw her arms around Nia, whirling her up into the air like the climax of a romantic movie. “Are you okay? We were so worried, are you-- is there anybody you need punched? Because I will get my fists up in _anybody’s_ faces for you, you know that, right?” 

“Yeah,” Nia said hoarsely, stumbling as her feet hit the ground again. “Yeah, I know.” 

She looked around, over both shoulders. “There aren’t any photographers here, are there?” 

“My parents issued a public statement,” Ty said, as he caught up with Carol, panting slightly. “They’re not buying any photographs, and they’ll see to it that anyone who sells a photo of you that was taken without your permission never sells another pic to any of their outlets.” 

Nia felt a wave of relief wash over her. “Thank them,” she said, gratefully. “Thank them for me.” She smiled, wearily, at Ty, and pressed her face into his tee shirt. He put one arm around her, kissed the top of her head, and held out a beer. 

She took a long swig, then grimaced at the taste. “That’s terrible, Ty,” she said. 

“Well, excuse me, Miss My-Parents-Reared-Me-On-Twenty-Five-Year-Old-Scotch,” Ty answered. “Some of us have to settle for swill.” But he kissed her head again, and then nuzzled his nose into her hair, warm and cuddly and soft. 

“How are you doing?” Nia asked. “How’s the--”

“My parents are furious,” Ty answered. “Of course. We all _know_ it’s retaliation; UNITY’s pissed at my parents, but they’re afraid to shut down Viastone. They know people will revolt if they take over the news outlets.” 

Nia took a deep breath. She’d heard the story before, how UNITY had charged that Viastone was dangerous, that their criticism could destroy the fledgling government before it ever got off the ground. They’d been accused of being radical dissidents set on toppling UNITY, and that the only trustworthy place to get news was through Oscorp, where the news was carefully crafted pro-UNITY propaganda. Norman Osborn, the owner of Oscorp had been heralded as a hero of the people and leveraged his success to become the Director of the new global government. The conflict between his regime and the remaining news outlets had raged on ever since, and Ty seemed to be its latest casualty.

He shrugged. “Of course, they _are_ putting me in prime position to sabotage--”

“Oh, and get yourself thrown in jail,” Jim piped in as he finally ambled his way over. “Real smart, Captain.” 

Ty waggled his eyebrows and tossed Jim a salute. 

“Are you two leaving tomorrow?” Nia asked Carol, and then Jim. 

“Yeah,” said Jim. “I was worried I wouldn’t get to _see_ you.” 

Nia slid out of Ty’s arms and gave Jim a hug, butting at his chest with her forehead. 

“You okay, Nee?” Jim asked, bumping her arm with his fist. 

She shook her head. “No,” she answered. “I had to sneak out. But I figured, military always ships out the day after assignments, so--” she shrugged.

“We’re not even going to the same _place_ ,” Jim said with a groan, gesturing at Carol.

“That was probably on purpose,” Carol answered, and she snatched at Jim’s hand. In her heels, she was taller than him, and leaned down to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Your file probably has _pages_ of reports that you don’t get any work done when you have the opportunity to stare at my butt.” 

“It’s a cute butt,” Jim informed Carol, giving the butt in question a squeeze. Carol wriggled her nose back at him and took a swig of her beer. 

“Ty, give your lady some beer,” Jim urged. “She needs it.” 

Ty rolled his eyes. “She said it’s disgusting,” he informed Jim. 

“That’s because it _is_ ,” said Nia, kicking her feet in the sand. 

Jim and Carol were trading kisses on each other’s noses. Nia looked away, flushing, feeling like she was invading their privacy, even if they were the ones doing it right in front of her. 

“Nee?” Ty asked, looking down at her. “Can we...go somewhere? I need to talk to you.” He looked up, his eyes searching, head turning toward the wooded area that backed onto the nearest house. 

She looked back at Jim and Carol, who were staring affectionately into each other’s eyes and whispering, and figured she could give them the time alone. 

She nodded. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed, and followed him toward the trees. 

He caught her hand a few paces before they stopped, then snatched at her shoulder, backing her up against the trunk of a tree. 

He kissed her without preface, lips soft against hers, and she leaned into him for a moment, then back, but he pressed on, tongue flicking over her upper lip and then into her mouth. Her cheeks went hot; her arms began to tingle, and she snatched up a handful of his shirt before she remembered herself and broke the kiss. 

“Wait, Ty, come on,” she said, and he frowned at her, resting his hand against the tree trunk, just above her head, hovering over her with an inquisitive look.

“Hmm?” he asked. 

He tried to kiss her again, and she groaned, and leaned out of the way. “I thought we were talking?” 

“What?” Ty shook his head. “Oh. No. I…No, that was just to get away from everybody else without-- you know, sounding---”

“For fuck’s sake, Ty, it’s Jim and Carol. _They_ were making out on the beach. All you needed to do was say ‘I want to suck your face off in the woods, wanna come?’ and I would have been like, sure, let me hydrate so I have some spit first.” 

Ty sighed and ran a hand over his face. “You always take the romance out of everything.” 

“What?” Nia asked. “Because I said spit?” She stepped up on her tiptoes, licked his face. “Come on, get a sense of humor, Captain.” 

Ty wiped the damp mark off his cheek and grinned down at her. “Will you accept my humble apology?” he asked, dropping a kiss on her nose as he tugged at the hem of her tee shirt. 

“Maaaaybe,” she answered, and kissed him back. 

He pressed her farther up against the tree, catching at one of her hands as he separated her lips and slid his tongue over her teeth, and she dropped back, feeling the tree bark scratch her back through her shirt, but not caring, because for the first time all day, she didn’t have to _think_. 

She snuck her own hands up beneath his shirt, sliding her fingers over his smooth chest, his well-defined muscles, and laughed as he caught his fingers on the back of her bra, unfastening it and tugging it forward, away from her breasts. 

She wriggled out of his grip, snatching the bra off through one of her shirtsleeves, and dropping it to the ground, even as Ty cupped one of her breasts in his hand. Her breast was small, and his hands was huge, and covered it fully. 

“You’re finding that before we leave,” she murmured. 

She slid her hands around his neck, pulling him down to her height to kiss him more deeply, and he teased at her nipple with his thumb. 

His mouth strayed from hers, and he bit down on her earlobe, hard.

Her shoulders twitched, and then she shivered, and let out a little moan, inadvertently, and nibbled at his lower lip. His other hand drifted down, unbuttoning her jeans, fingers sliding beneath her waistband, catching at the elastic of her panties. 

“Ty,” she murmured, weakly, into his mouth, her cheeks warm and her head fuzzy, even as she slid her own hand over the bulge in his pants, teasing at it with her fingers through the fabric. “Today was kind of fucked up, I actually did want to talk--” 

He grunted, and sucked in a breath. “I have to leave tomorrow,” he said. He brushed a fingertip over her clit, and her knees wobbled. She braced herself against the tree as he kissed her again, deeply, and pressed his erection up against her palm. “I don’t want to waste our last--” 

She sucked in a breath; swallowed, gasped at the heavy sensation. “I want to see my friends,” she pointed out between kisses. Her skin was getting hot, sticky; she could feel the back of her shirt clinging to the sweaty spot between her shoulderblades. “Ty, this isn’t how I want to--” 

“There’ll be time,” Ty urged, and he unbuttoned his own trousers when she made no move to. He snatched up her hand with his free one, slid it down the front of his pants. 

She closed her hand around his cock mechanically, reflexively, and he sighed softly, and slid a finger inside her. She wobbled again; it was hard to stay upright against the tree. 

“I just want something to remember you by,” he whispered softly, and she recoiled at his words, without quite understanding why. 

Flinching, she drew her hand away. “What?” she asked. 

“Why are you stopping?” he asked. “What--”

Her face went hot, and she ground down on her teeth, grabbing his hand by the wrist and tugging it free of her jeans. “This is how you want to remember me?” she asked. “Finger-fucked up against a tree?” 

“I just meant--” Ty started.

“I told you I didn’t _want to_!” she shouted at him, and she zipped up her pants, dropping to her knees to fumble for her bra. 

Ty reached for her shoulder. “You didn’t really mean--” he started. 

She glared up at him for one moment before she punched him in the crotch. “Remember me with _that_ ,” she snapped, before she marched, braless, back to the beach.

“Nee?” Jim asked, as she stomped through the sand, back up to them. It was only from the expressions on their faces that she realized how awful she must look. “What’s the matter?”

She combed a hand, self-consciously, through her hair, and spat into the sand, looking down. “I punched Ty in the balls,” she said. 

There was a long silence, then Carol began to giggle. “Sorry!” she exclaimed, and she put an arm, gingerly, around Nia’s shoulders. “I’m so--”

“What she means is he probably deserved it,” said Jim. 

Nia made a face, then rubbed at her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging.

“Come on, after what happened to you today?” Carol asked. “He didn’t even ask how you were; he just launched into his own complaints.” 

Carol brushed Nia’s hair out of her face and kissed her, softly, on the forehead. “You never have to see him after today, okay, love?” 

“I don’t want to see him _now_ ,” she grumbled, even as she saw his shadow staggering out of the trees. She looked to Jim. “Can I get a ride home?” 

Jim’s car was a miracle of automotive engineering, a machine the two of them had built two summers before out of spare parts, salvaged scrap, and whatever else they could find. It had been their proudest achievement, getting that wreck to actually run, and not only run, but run better than anything on the market. Nia had, somewhat grandiosely, offered up her half of the car to Jim as his birthday gift. 

“Stop here,” Nia directed, and Jim let the car roll to a halt in the driveway up to her house. “I have to sneak back in; if my parents hear the monster--” 

“Yeah, I gotcha,” Jim said. He looked over at her, frowning, eyes thoughtful. “You gonna be okay?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t want to leave you--” 

“We could come in,” Carol offered. “Us sneaking in isn’t as bad as you sneaking out, right?” 

Nia turned around and stuck her tongue out at Carol, who was lounging in the back seat. “Nah,” she said. “You guys go enjoy yourselves. Have some actually-good-sex in an actual bed or something.” 

“Planning on it,” they chorused, and Nia made a gagging sound. 

“”You’re not supposed to--” She groaned. “Okay,” she said. “Out of the car. Everybody.” 

The three of them hugged, tightly, Jim and Carol sandwiching Nia in the center, bumping their noses against the top of her much-shorter head. 

“Call me as _soon_ as you’re settled,” Nia instructed. “Both of you.” 

Carol shoved a scrap of paper at her. “Here’s both of our APOs,” she said. “Write.” 

“I’ll send you horrible care packages full of stickers and stale cookies,” Nia warned, and she kissed Carol, and then Jim, on the cheek, hugged them both again, and let them get back into the car. 

Jim insisted on staying in the driveway until she’d walked well enough out of the way that she’d disappeared from sight. 

She circled the house, back to the kitchen door, and found it locked. “Fuck,” she muttered. Jarvis must have gone to bed. She groaned, and walked around the house, looking for a first-floor window that was open, even a crack. She knew how to jimmy one open, or pick a lock, but Howard had installed his own impeccable security all around the house, and the only way to fool the alarms was to start with a door or window that was already open-- something she’d learned the hard way when she was fourteen.

And this was the last night she wanted to get caught sneaking back, not after everything else that had happened that day.

As she circled the house, coming back to the front and fast running out of window options, she stumbled, and realized how tired she was-- suddenly, feeling heavy and slow and clumsy, she rubbed at her head, felt a languid ache in her legs and back. 

Here, the outer walls of the house were lined by thick bushes; there was nowhere to easily lean. She sank, weak-kneed, to the grass, crawled beneath the nearest bush, and shut her eyes. the twigs and leaves of the surrounding shrubbery pricking at her uncomfortably, scratching at her arms. She felt herself start to drowse.

“This is a terrible,” she told herself, rubbing at her face with one hand, “place to fall asleep. Stop it, stop…” 

She decided five minutes couldn’t hurt. She curled up, resting her cheek on her arm, her bare elbow in the dirt. 

She wasn’t sure how much time had lapsed when she woke, and it took her a moment to make sense of where she was, sitting up too fast so her face got scratched by the branches of the bush she was sleeping in. It was still dark, and she thanked all the deities she didn’t technically believe in that she hadn’t slept all night in the dirt. 

She pressed her hands against the ground, the earth yielding under her fingers, and started up, when she caught, in the corner of her eye, light reflected off something running horizontally along the wall of the house-- completely obscured from the lawn by the bushes. 

She frowned, and reached out for it-- it was a cable or a tube, painted white like the edifice of the house, but glossier, coated in rubber, and flexible. She crawled further into the bushes, until she was flush up against the side of the wall, and traced her finger down the length of the cable, until it abruptly changed directions ninety degrees, running downward and entering the house through a small opening in a partially-recessed window. 

A partially-recessed window _with an opening_. She’d found her way in. 

Her hand pressed up against the glass, she leaned forward, trying to peer inside, trying to figure, from her mental map of the house, what part of the cellar she was near. 

A thick, dark curtain-- a blackout curtain---obscured her view. She couldn’t place it; she certainly didn't recall seeing it from its reverse. She racked her brain, trying to put this room in position in her mental model of the house, trying the remember if those curtains might have draped a window in one of her father's storerooms, when suddenly, with a hitch of her breath, it struck her. 

She tapped the window lightly, jiggled at the tube, and tried to fit a finger into the space where the tube ran. It was sealed over with caulk, up to the space where the tube passed through, but she was able to peel some of it away with her fingers. She held the window carefully in place, wriggling the frame up as she dug out more of the caulk, until she had managed to squeeze her hand in, sliding her fingers around the frame until she found Howard’s electronic lock and entered the security override. 

The light on the lock blinked red twice, then green twice: the signal that it was disarmed properly. 

She let out a sigh of relief, relaxing slightly as she lowered herself onto her belly and carefully jiggled the window in its frame before she started to slide it up, very slowly. 

The curtain blocked her view of the room, but the first thing she noticed was that it was chilly, as if the room was fully air-conditioned, the cold air leaking out through the open window. She shimmied around so she could climb in feet-first, and she slipped backward into the room, dropping to her feet with a smack against a tile floor that was louder than she intended. She stumbled back, her shoe catching on the bottom of the blackout curtain, and she groaned-- the window was too high, too far out of reach for her to shut it without climbing back up. She pulled herself up on the windowsill and fumbled at the frame with her elbow until she managed to shut it most of the way, then dropped back to the floor, more steadily this time.

She turned, and pushed the blackout curtains out of the way, to find herself hit with a blast of icy air. Shivering, she dropped the curtain back in front of her, like a shield against the frigid temperatures of the room.

“Okay, Nia,” she muttered to herself. “You can do this. Just find the door; it’s like _two seconds_ out in the frozen wasteland. Pretend you’re an Arctic explorer or something.” 

She pushed the curtain back again, and wrapped her arms around herself, all the hairs on her body sticking out at once. She could feel her skin puckering with goosebumps, feel her nipples harden to taut points beneath her shirt, ticklish against the cotton. 

She shuddered. The room was pure darkness; she couldn’t see a thing except for some pale lights blinking in green and blue and red and white along the wall to the right. She supposed it was unlikely the door was in that wall, so she put her hands out and slid her feet along the floor, slowly and carefully so as not to slam into anything, and moved in the direction of the wall opposite the window. 

Her knee hit something solid first-- banged it, so it made a clanging sound, and the cold metallic surface of whatever she’d bumped left her with a smarting pain in her knee. She reached out with her hands, felt a smooth surface-- something plastic and dome-shaped, it seemed, with small divots puncturing the plastic at intervals. She kept one hand on the top of the dome as she edged around it, gingerly. The dome, too, was ice-cold. She wondered what, what her parents must be keeping in there; it seemed like it must be some kind of refrigeration unit, something that had to be stored at below-freezing temperatures. 

If that was all their secret room was, she thought, she was a bit disappointed. Though she couldn’t imagine what they did down here for all that time-- or how they bore the cold. She supposed maybe that was all this was-- storage, storage for other experiments, and maybe the lab was another room. The temperatures, she thought, would loan them to medical samples, maybe something her mother required for experiments. Or some unstable material her father needed to keep at a low temperature or risk blowing up the house.

“Good enough reason to divorce a man as any,” she muttered. She edged her way to the other side of the dome-- it was more of an oblong object, maybe seven feet or so in length, and the other end of it left her far from her starting point. She could guess that the room didn’t go on much further, because there were no more lights blinking back on the right wall past a certain point. 

She started shuffling across the floor blindly again, palms facing forward, and a few paces later, she hit paint and plaster, the rigid feeling of eggshell finish beneath her fingers. She shut her eyes-- it wasn’t as if they were doing her much good; there was too little light even for her vision to adjust-- and felt along the wall until she found a knob that felt like it might be a lightswitch. 

She opened her eyelids just slightly, so that her eyelashes were still brushing against each other, and turned the knob. 

The light came on, dim and golden, and she smiled as she saw the door only a few inches away from where her hand rested on the switch. 

She reached for the doorknob, her hand shivering and a little numb, then stopped, realizing that here she was, that this was the room she’d been trying to find a way into for _years_. She needed to see it. 

She turned around. 

The room was impeccably clean: tile floor, as she’d guessed, and whitewashed walls. The wall to what had been her right-- now her left-- with all the little colored lights, was just that, a huge rack of machinery, with dials and sensors and gauges, all fed by the object in the center of the room.

Which was a bed. 

It wasn’t an ordinary bed, of course-- it was a high platform, covered with-- as she’d assumed-- a clear plastic dome. 

And inside was a man-- a naked, sleeping man. Her heartbeat sped up, her jaw dropped, and she screamed in spite of herself. 

She clapped a hand over her mouth a second later. “Fuck,” she said. Her voice came out a squeak. “Fuck, fuck, fuck--” The man didn’t seem to stir, and the more she eyed him, the more she was/became fairly certain he wasn’t breathing. 

She groped for the door behind her. The handle was icy, but she jerked it open and vaulted herself from the room, her heart pounding in her chest.

She found herself in a narrow hall, only lit by the light from the-- _whatever_ that room had been-- behind her. It was plain, unadorned, apart from a set of hooks bearing two long coats. 

She stared at the coats and let out a choked laugh. Her skin tingled, came alive at the sudden rush of warm air against it, and she sagged against one wall of the hallway. 

The cold air was rushing into the hall, fast, and Nia swore as she realized she had to choose between warmth and light.

She chose warmth, snapping the door shut behind her, and felt her way blind along the walls of the hall. Her head and her heart were both pounding; she panted softly, and, for a moment, rested her cheek against the plaster wall. 

Just as her eyes drooped shut, the hall was flooded with bright light.

"Nia!"

She snapped to attention at the sound of her father's voice. 

Her attempt to reply turned into a squeak. 

Howard simply stared at her, hard, for a long time. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again, and made a chewing motion with his mouth, as if he were literally ruminating on his words.

"Howard--" Nia started slowly, cautiously, hoping to preempt any further battles.

"How did you get in here?" Howard asked. She could smell whiskey on his breath; she groaned, picturing the worst this conversation could go.

"Why is there a comatose guy in our basement?" Nia countered.

"I'm not angry," Howard said, even though he was clearly trying to modulate his voice, even though there was certainly a strain in it. "I need to know how you got in, so I can update the security."

"Whatever that cable is running the the window," Nia answered. "There's a break in the seal; I was able to disarm the house alarm without tripping anything."

"You're saying you know the code," Howard observed.

"You code on _everything_ is Captain America," Nia pointed out. "I almost thought you wanted me to break into your creepy rooms full of coma patients." 

Howard ran a hand over his face. "Nia--" he started. 

Footsteps sounded in the hall. "That'll be your mother," Howard said, not sounding as if he relished the thought. 

Maria's face appeared at the door, and she raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, it's definitely been an eventful day," she observed. "Is that what the screaming was about? You met Steve?"

Nia blinked. "Steve?" She asked. "He has a name?" 

She felt a bit stupid as soon as she said it, of course he had a name; people generally had names. 

Maria and Howard exchanged a glance. 

"You didn't tell her?" Maria asked.

"I was about to," Howard answered. He took off his glasses, rubbing at his eyes before he put them back on. 

"You have a guy named Steve in a coma in our basement," Nia said, just to summarize the situation.

"He's not technically _comatose_ ," Maria answered. 

"Oh," Nia said, looking at her mother. "He's one of your patients?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Maria. "Do you want to meet him?"

"He doesn't seem especially conversational," Nia pointed out. "Do you always keep patients in the basement?"

Her parents exchanged a glance. Howard chuckled. "Just the one."

"Come here," said Maria. She handed Nia one of the coats, wrapping the other one around herself, and opened the door. 

Nia followed her mother in. Howard waited in the doorway, in the hall where it wasn't quite so freezing cold. It wasn't so bad with the coat on-- she was still cold, but not uncomfortable.

"Just the one?" Nia asked, as she stepped up the the plastic case that held the patient-- _Steve_ , she corrected, in her head. "How long has he been here?"

She hesitated, steeling herself, but this time she was prepared for the body inside its protective shell. She put her hands on the case and looked down.

He was tall, taller than Obie, taller than Ty, and built like a Greek statue: all muscles, all lean, broad-shouldered but not bulky, almost delicate in his physique, in spite of his size, built like a dancer, with a narrow waist and hips, and--

She coughed and attempted to keep her eyes politely fixed above the hips, but it was a losing battle. She tried to focus on his face instead. He had a square jaw, high cheekbones, a strong, straight nose-- she knew that; she knew all that already. She'd seen his face a thousand times, on posters and in old newsreels, in her father's private photo collection. 

He had fine golden hair, and she wondered, as she looked at how it curled just behind his ears, at his smooth skin, if her parents had to shave him, if they gave his hair a trim now and then. 

And there, when she stepped closer, there was the scar, the one mark the Project Rebirth experiment had left on his body-- a red blotch, shining and twisted across the center of his sternum, shaped curiously like a star. 

Nia sucked in a breath, and realized her mouth was wide open. 

"It's really him," she said. She pressed a finger to the plastic, as if she could feel him from this side, as if she expected him to respond, to shift or stir. She looked at her mother, shaking her head. "But he's only a little younger than Howard! How is he so young?"

He looked younger than she’d ever imagined him-- though she supposed he’d only been a few years older than she was when he’d died. 

_Disappeared_ , she mentally corrected, though she wasn’t quite sure, really, what to call this. She watched his face, watched his long, golden eyelashes, waiting for them to flutter, to show signs of life. 

“The serum,” Maria answered. “It prevents aging; the high healing factor slows him down, so to speak.” 

“He’s beautiful,” she said, and then realized she’d said it out loud. She flushed, and stammered. “I mean. Uh--” 

Maria snorted, her eyes twinkling. “We _all_ thought so, Nia,” she replied. 

“Ew,” Nia said, making a face. “Weird, Mom. What’s he doing here?”

“We’ve been trying to wake him up,” Maria answered. 

Nia winced, and she looked back at Howard, who was watching, shivering, in the doorway. “It’s his heart, isn’t it?” she asked Maria. “This is why-- your new prosthetic, the one you had me help you model, that’s for _him_ , isn’t it?” 

“No,” Howard said. “His heart’s fine. Everything’s fine. His vitals are perfect. We just haven’t been able to revive him.” 

Nia blinked. She looked back at Steve, still and serene in his encasement, and bit her lip. “You tried kissing him?” she asked dryly.

“Yes,” Howard answered, his expression dead serious. 

Nia blinked. That was not the answer she’d expected. “O...kay,” she replied slowly. 

“We’ve tried everything we can think of,” Maria said. “We’ve been trying, for twenty-five years.” 

“We’ll keep trying,” Howard added. “We’re not going to give up until he’s awake.” 

“Well, he seems to be taking his time,” said Nia. She scratched at the sleeves of her jacket. “Who else knows he’s here?” 

Howard shook his head. “No one,” he replied. 

“Not-- not even Aunt Peggy?” Nia asked. 

Maria and Howard both went silent, then exchanged a look. “No,” said Maria. 

“Not when we weren’t sure we could save him,” said Howard. “It would have crippled her. Can you imagine? If she’d come every day down here to visit him? If she hadn’t been able to move on with her life?” 

Nia thought back, to all the nights in her own childhood when her parents had vanished, to all the time she’d spend wondering what they did in that secret room, and shook her head, pursing her lips together. “No,” she said. “I can’t imagine.” 

“Come on,” Maria said, nodding Nia toward the door. “It’s getting late; we should all…”

“Yeah,” Nia agreed, and then she stopped. “Wait,” she said. “I want to help.” 

She wasn’t sure what made her say it, but it was out of her mouth before she realized what she’d offered. 

“Help?” Howard asked, stepping aside as Nia left the room. “Do you think--” He looked to Maria.

“I don’t have a _job_ ,” Nia pointed out. “Or any friends, for that matter. Maybe this is serendipity?” 

Howard chuckled. 

“I don’t see why not,” said Maria. “There’s not...there isn’t much to do on a day-to-day basis; it’s mostly just checking stats and observing conditions.” 

“I can do that,” Nia insisted. “That’s perfect. I’d be _happy_ to observe his condition.” 

Nia realized that she may have been better off wording it some other way when both of her parents began snickering, and she felt her face go hot. “You know what I mean,” she grumbled. 

“Fine,” said Howard. He pushed the door at the far end of the hall open, and held it for Nia. "I am leaving for the Northeastern Territories tomorrow; it's as good a task as any for you to take until we decide what to do with you."

She winced at the reminder, though she knew Howard meant well by it, and walked out, back into the dining room, and turned around to eye the bookcase. “How do I get back in?” 

“These books,” Maria said, as she shoved the bookshelf-door shut and then pulled four different books out from their spots on the shelf. The door swung open again, and the books popped back into their places. “Try it.”

Nia shut the door and copied her mother’s actions. The door sprang open, satisfyingly so. She grinned and popped it shut again. 

Staring silently, quietly at the bookshelf, she realized that the night had ended on a decent note after all: both of her parents, in one place, trusting her as if she were an adult. 

She looked to both of her parents. “Thanks,” she said.


	4. Time To Go

It was already painfully late by the time Nia fell into her bed, especially given that she'd been up before six the morning previous, and hadn't exactly slept well, being a bundle of nerves about graduation. 

But she slept fitfully, now even more a bundle of nerves over the rest of her life. She dreamed about graduation, about getting on that stage and being told she was expected to speak, but having no words. She dreams about being thronged by reporters. She had uncomfortably pleasant dreams about Ty, where everything was okay, where they fucked in her own bed and then clung to each other, and she was happy, happy they'd worked things out, happy they were together and that it wasn't a dream. 

And then she woke up, and he wasn't in bed with her, and she knew they hadn't worked things out, and it was still dark out, and everything that had happened the day before was still _real_ , and Ty was the least of her worries. She tried to sleep again, pulled the covers up to her shoulders, and turned first onto her other side, and then onto her back, but her mind was too full, going a million miles an hour. She tried to count to one hundred, but she got there too quickly, so she tried counting backwards, but she kept getting distracted by other thoughts, by pictures and numbers and noises filling her head. 

She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut, and slipped a hand between her thighs, but now all she could see was Ty, and it made her shudder, made her stomach turn, until she felt repulsed and snatched her fingers away. 

“Fuck you,” she muttered. 

Finally, her head feeling heavy and her eyes sore from lack of sleep, she climbed out of bed again. She tiptoed downstairs in her pajamas, pulling on a thick, fluffy pair of slippers, and crept back to the dining room bookshelf. 

She opened the secret door without trouble, shut it behind her, moved purposely down the hall, and grabbed a jacket from the hooks.

Ducking back into Steve’s room-- for want of a better name-- she flicked the lights on, and walked up to the man. “It’s like a coffin,” she said, running her hand over the plastic encasement. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have my hands all over you; it’s weird. I--”

She bit her lip, still expecting him to wake up, to say something. When he didn’t, she turned her back to him, leaning on his box as she slid to the floor. “Today _sucked_ , Steve,” she said. 

“And I don’t have anybody else to talk to,” she added quietly, tapping on the icy floor with her fingers. She shivered, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself, and leaned her head back against the case. “My boyfriend was acting like an asshat, my friends are all leaving, my parents...well, you know my parents. I mean, I guess...they listened more today than they usually do, but we’ll see what they do when there’s no more crisis, yeah? They’re both really good at emergencies, but the rest of the time…” 

She sighed. “I guess you’re their emergency,” she said. “I guess you’ve been their emergency for twenty-five years, huh?” 

Something jabbed at her chest, and she sucked in a breath, pressing a hand to her head. “Fuck you, Steve,” she said. “Sorry, It’s not your fault, but fuck you. I just...you’re one more stupid thing, you know? And you’re gonna be their priority until they wake you up.” 

She bit her lip; her face felt numb, and it wasn’t from the cold. “Unless I do,” she said, slowly, as the realization came to her. 

She climbed to her feet, trembling and achy. “So let’s see,” she said. 

She turned toward the wall of dials and sensors. His breathing was shockingly slow; his heart rate just as minimal. All of the readings, on all of the dials, seemed impossibly low-- low, but present. His brainwaves--

“Your synapses are _gone_ ,” Nia observed. She tugged her jacket more tightly around her. “Gone, like you’re…” She bit her lip and looked back at Steve, still and silent in his tomblike enclosure. 

“Hibernating,” she said. “The obvious answer would be raising the temperature, right? So let’s assume they already tried that. I guess they’ve already calculated that this is the optimal temperature, right? Okay. So.” 

She ran a finger around the hermetic seal between the table where Steve lay and the enclosing box itself. “Where’s the…ah!” 

Nia found a small button, and pressed it, and the seal released itself with a hydraulic hissing sound. She felt a tingle rise up from her fingertip through her arm, like a little electric current, as she pulled the casing back, turning to watch the dials and sensors behind her, to make sure his vitals remained steady. 

“Okay, let me look at you,” she said. She pressed a finger to his shoulder, tentatively at first, and then more firmly-- he was about as cold as the room. 

“Holy fuck,” Nia said, as she spread out her fingers, pressed a hand to his icy skin. “I’m touching Captain America. I’m fucking touching Captain America; I’m--” 

She pulled her hand away. 

“Fuck,” she whispered, shivering. She shut her eyes. “Okay, Steve. I know this is creepy and weird and I’m sorry it’s not consensual and under _any_ other circumstances, I wouldn’t try it, but you kind of look like Snow White here, and I’ll kick myself if I don’t, so..” 

She leaned forward, shut her eyes, and pressed her lips to his.

His mouth was cold, and unyielding, and very, very still.

She winced, and stepped back. “Gross,” she said, feeling suddenly guilty. “I’m sorry, Steve. Especially with you, uh--I’m not looking at your junk; I promise I’m not looking at your junk…” She put a hand up to shield her peripheral vision. “Sorry. Okay. Like, if you’re even remotely conscious even with your synapses all fucked up like that, and you remember any of this, I am so, so sorry.” 

She shut the encasement again, and grimaced. “I’m gonna...I guess I should actually talk to my parents and see what they’ve tried, yeah? That’s probably, uh--”

She was blushing. She was _blushing_ , bright red, in front of an unconscious man.

“I am _really_ , really sleep-deprived,” she realized, and then she realized who she was saying it to, and laughed, nervously. “Wanna trade places?” 

Steve didn’t answer. 

She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Right,” she said. “Okay. Well. Back up to bed, I guess. Maybe it’ll be better in the morning.” 

The first wisps of early morning light were just visible over the trees as Nia made her way, groggily, up to bed, and flopped down on top of her sheets.

This time, when she fell asleep, she didn’t dream.

*******

“Nia?”

It was her father’s voice, her father, who have never tried to wake her up once in her entire life, standing in the doorway. 

“Nia?” he tried again.

“What?” she groaned, as she pulled herself up, wiping drool from her face.

Howard squinted at her. “Did you go back to the cellar last night?” he asked. 

“N--” Nia started to say, and then realized she hadn’t shed the jacket she had worn into Steve’s room. “Uh. Yeah,” she said, tugging at the lapels. “Uh. I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to check out his vitals, you know, uh...familiarize myself with the case?” 

She rubbed her eyes. “Since I’m going to be, you know--helping--”

Howard pursed his lips, looking all too serious. “Change of plans,” he said. “Pack a bag, for a week. Uniforms, business attire, cocktail dresses.” 

“What?” Nia asked. 

“You’re coming to my conference,” Howard answered. 

Nia blinked, shook her head, blinked again. “What? Why?” 

Years ago, months ago, even days ago, Nia would have jumped at the chance, if Howard had invited her to see him work, but today-- this morning-- after the previous night, it all seemed too sudden. 

“What about Steve?” she asked.

“Steve’s in stasis,” Howard answered. “He’s been left alone for weeks before. Jarvis checks on him if necessary.” 

“Jarvis knows?” Nia asked. 

“It would be a little difficult to hide from him, in the same house,” Howard pointed out. 

Nia nodded. It was stupid of her, really, she thought; she should have deduced as much, seeing as _she’d_ known the room existed for so long. 

Howard was silent for a moment, brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth once, twice, a third time, shutting it again and again, as if he were thinking and rethinking what to say. 

“Howard?” Nia said, finally. “You look like a fish.” 

“I--” He huffed. “It’s for your safety.” 

“My safety?” Nia asked, incredulously. “What’s threatening my safety this time?” 

“We’ll talk about it on the way,” Howard answered. “Just--” he gestured at her bedroom. “Get packed. Say goodbye to your mother.” 

In spite of her globetrotting parents, Nia had rarely been away for more than a long weekend for anything but school trips, and those only required uniforms. Her parents went away to work, not for pleasure, and Nia’s only real vacations had been the few times Aunt Peggy had taken her to stay in a beach house out on the East End of Long Island on her summer breaks from school. Those required bathing suits and linen slacks, maybe a skirt and blouse if they went out to dinner. She had no idea how to dress for business, and she was fairly certain she only owned one dress suitable for a cocktail party, and that was the one Carol had given her, that her parents didn’t know she owned and that was absolutely not regulation. 

“Maria?” she asked, plaintive, feeling very helpless, as she walked into the living room on her mother’s side of the house. Maria was reading a newspaper and drinking her morning coffee. 

“Are you already ready to go?” Maria asked. “Howard said an hour.” 

“Howard said cocktail dresses,” Nia said, holding her hands up, empty. “I don’t have cocktail dresses.” 

Maria sighed. “You’re eighteen; you should have cocktail dresses.” 

“I don’t go to cocktail parties,” Nia pointed out. “I have one party dress, and one, uh. One dress for funerals that I guess would be all right?” 

“No black,” Maria answered. “Everyone wears black. If you wear black, they won’t see you.. You want people to be forced to notice you.” 

“I...all right?” Nia said, even as Maria picked up the phone and started dialing. 

“What size dress do you wear?” Maria asked, cradling the phone between her cheek and her shoulder.

“A…” Nia didn’t really know. “Like a...ten or a twelve, maybe? Kind of depending how tight the waist is? A medium or a large?” 

A short exchange later, Maria hung up, looking back to Nia. “Miss Potts will have clothing and jewelry sent ahead to the hotel. And shoes.” 

“Thank you,” Nia whispered, feeling very, very small. She bit her lower lip. “Maria?” she asked. 

“Yes?” 

“Howard wouldn’t tell me why I’m going. He just said it’s for my own safety. Is--” 

Maria sighed, and looked heavenward, shaking her head. “That sounds just like your father. Everything on a need-to-know basis, and no one but him needs to know. It’s the Stone boy,” Maria answered. “Nia, I’ve been telling you for years that I don’t like him--”

Nia growled. “Did he come over here?” she asked. “We--” She realized she couldn’t exactly tell her mother everything without admitting that she’d sneaked out of the house. “We had a fight yesterday. It’s fine; it’s over; we’re doing different things now, anyway.” 

Maria arched an eyebrow, and shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said, and she walked to the window, pushing back the curtains. “It is definitely not over.” 

“Wha--” Nia walked to the windowsill, looked out on the front lawn of their house. Just past the pristine emerald grass, the beautifully-sculpted shrubbery, the columns that marked the end of the property, stood a _phalanx_ of reporters and photographers, eyes all turned up on the house. 

The moment she reached the window, one of them pointed, and all of the cameras swept upward, angled directly at her. 

“Fuck!” Nia exclaimed, and she drew the curtains shut with a snap. “What _is_ that? Is that--” She swallowed, remembering what Ty had said, that his family wouldn’t allow any stories about her to be run. 

This appeared to be a complete one-eighty reversal on that edict. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” she groaned, and sat down on her mother’s sofa, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I hate him; I hate him--” 

“Well, whatever you did clearly did _not_ please him,” Maria observed. “So I’m sure that if I knew what it was, I’d thoroughly approve.” 

Nia gulped and crumpled over, leaning her face on the armrest, feeling the coarse fabric of the sofa’s upholstery imprinting its grain on her skin. “I punched him in the, uh. Crotch,” she said, finally. 

Maria rarely laughed, certainly not around Nia, or at Nia’s jokes. Now, she cackled gleefully. “Good,” she said. “If any of those reporters hound you, that’s what you tell them.”

Maria sat down next to her on the sofa, put her hand tentatively on Nia’s shoulder, and gave it a pat. It was a little mechanical, a little uncertain, but in that moment, Nia was incredibly grateful. 

“So that,” Maria said. “Is why we decided it would be better for you to go. We can tell everyone it’s part of your continuing education. The conference only allows limited press, and you’ll be well-protected, and I’m hopeful that by the time you’re through, the interest will have died down a bit.” 

Nia hoped she was right. 

“I don’t like this,” she said, getting up from the sofa. “I don’t like _somebody else_ getting to control what I do, like-- like--Can’t Howard _stop him_?”

“The fourth estate is protected,” Maria answered, shaking her head. “We fought long and hard to keep an intact press, after the war; we’ve got people like Osborn and Roxxon and Ross trying to shut them down. _I_ fought long and hard against your _father_. They’re not on our property; you’re a newsworthy figure now.” 

“Because you _fucked with my assignment_!” Nia snapped. “I’m not going halfway around the world just to run away from my pissy boyfriend!” 

She curled her hands into fists, and marched to the telephone. She dialed like each spin of the rotary was a stab with a knife. 

“Stone residence,” Ty said, smoothly, as if he were answering for someone else. 

“Stop faking it, Ty, you know it’s me,” Nia growled into the receiver. 

“Who?” Ty asked.

“Call them _off_ ,” Nia said. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Ty replied sweetly. “Perhaps if you spoke in a more reasonable tone of voice.” 

Every cell of Nia’s body wanted to scream. “Ty,” she said, as slowly and as calmly as she could. “I punched you because you were being a _dick_. I’m sorry I punched you, but you were _being a dick_. This response is _hardly proportional_ to what happened last…” 

She winced, and looked at Maria, who was watching Nia with some consternation. 

“...night,” she continued, swallowing hard. 

“Response?” Ty asked. “Do you think I’m trying to get retribution?” He laughed. “I’m not mad at you, Nia. I know you were in a… _tizzy_ over your assignment; it’s only natural to take out your grief on other people.” His voice went low; he practically purred into the phone. “You want to make it up to me? Come over here right now, let me bend you over the kitchen table and fuck you till you’re writhing and helpless and screaming my--” 

“Fuck you, Ty,” Nia spat into the phone. She was hot; her face was red. She could feel her breath getting heavy. She looked at her mother, who was watching impassively, and her stomach turned at the thought that Maria might have any clue what Ty was saying. She knew Maria couldn’t hear, but she wondered if her own reaction, if her body language was giving it away. 

“That’s what I just suggested,” Ty answered. “Remember that time my parents were in the Southwestern Territories, covering that revolt, and we had the house to ourselves…” he said.

“Ty,” Nia tried again, shifting back and forth on her feet. “Ty, just call the reporters off, please.” 

“Remember how you sucked my cock and let me come all over your ugly little face?” Ty asked, his voice whisper-soft. 

Nia was trembling, now; she ground her teeth into her lip. “I don’t have to listen to this,” she said quietly. 

“You’re such a little slut, always so eager to please. You knew I was too good for you; you were so desperate to keep me. So happy that someone was paying attention to you, you’d let me do whatever I wanted.” Ty chuckled. “Do you know we have surveillance cameras all over the house?” 

Nia felt as if her heart had stopped. “Wh--” She started, but she couldn’t speak. She cringed, her knees locking up, and she turned away from her mother, so Maria couldn’t see her face. 

“Well,” Ty said. “I thought it was high time you got the kind of attention you always wanted. The kind you _deserve_. Since I’m leaving to work for UNITY... I sent that film to forty of our affiliate channels. With instructions to air it only at my say-so.” 

“You can’t-- I was under eighteen,” Nia blurted. 

“Nobody knows that,” Ty answered. “I was reviewing the footage. Your expressions are priceless. At the end, you begged me to fuck you. Begged and begged, and I didn’t give it to you till you called yourself a whore, told me you were filthy and didn’t deserve it. I think the public would really, really enjoy seeing that side of you, don’t you?” 

Nia threw the receiver across the room. When the cord extended too far, the phone came off the table, knocking a vase to the floor, where it shattered, smashing into tiny fragments of cream-white porcelain. Her shoulders heaved; she _screamed_ , without quite realizing what she was doing, and for the second time in as many days, felt more helpless than she had in her life. 

“Nia?” Maria asked, hesitantly, from where she still sat on the sofa. “Nia, are you--” 

And Nia burst into tears. “I hate him,” she said, her voice sounding thick and shrill and ugly, and her stomach lurched. She put her hands to her middle. “I want to puke.” 

“Well, let’s get you to a--” Maria started, standing up and reaching for Nia’s arm, all efficiency. 

Nia stepped back out of the way. “I said I _want_ to puke, not that I _have_ to!” 

Maria stopped, and stood still, tilting her head at Nia, looking lost for a moment.

“Stop being a doctor and be a _mom_ , for fuck’s sake!” Nia scolded. 

“Oh.” Maria frowned for a moment, then say back down on the sofa and patted her lap. “Okay, sweetheart. Come here.” 

That was how Jarvis found them, a half-hour later, with Nia, no longer crying, but red-eyed and crusty-nosed, lying on the sofa with her head in her mother’s lap, Maria’s fingers combing gently through her hair. 

“Is it time to go?” Nia asked, scrambling to sit up from her mother’s lap. 

“I’m afraid so, Miss,” said Jarvis. 

Impulsively, she clutched at Maria’s shoulders and kissed her on the mouth-- something she hadn’t done since she was a small child. 

Maria kissed her back, smoothed her hair down, and put her hands on Nia’s cheeks. “I’m sorry I’m not always the best parent,” she said. 

Nia’s eyes stung, and she shook off the feeling that she was going to cry again. “You’re still learning,” she assured her. “You’ve got time.” 

They hugged again, and Nia stood, and made her way across the room. “Oh!” she said, stopping mid-step. “Tell Steve goodbye for me?” she asked. “Tell him I’ll see him when I come back?” 

Maria blinked. “I don’t think he can hear anything,” she answered. “His brain doesn’t register any kind of--” 

“Just in case,” Nia urged, and she hurried to get her things together before her father scolded.


	5. The Most Precious Thing In The World

Traveling with Howard Stark on government business was nothing like anything Nia had ever done before. He had advised her to wear her uniform-- which had been a smart idea, if only because it allowed her to put on a false sense of decorum, to sit perfectly still, looking straight ahead, instead of acknowledging the journalists milling at the end of their driveway. She’d had a slight sense of satisfaction, too, knowing that a picture of her looking smart and professional in her service dress was not what any of them had been hoping for. Still, looking down at her chest, at the blank spot where her star should have been, made her feel all too self-conscious.

Now she walked quickly through the airport, escorted by a full complement of guards, all with guns and steel-toed boots, past civilian security, and the guards _certainly_ kept anyone from the press largely at bay. 

A tall man in military dress had greeted them at the airport door and explained to Howard that his guard was being doubled.  
“May I ask why?” Howard had asked. 

“There’s news the Rand boy is in New York,” said the man who had greeted them. “No confirmation yet, but if his crowd is spoiling for a fight--” 

Howard shook his head and waved the other man away. “We don’t even know what he looks like; we don’t have a good photo of him that’s less than ten years old. Even if we knew who to look for, Rand won’t be going after us; that’s not...that wasn’t his parents’ game” 

“Nonetheless, Mister Secretary,” the man said. “Director Osborn insisted.” 

Nia had put her hair in a high ponytail under her cap, and she followed behind her father with a little suitcase that rolled behind her on shiny wheel, and made a satisfying clicking noise every time she ran it over the tiles in the floor. 

The airport was cool, airconditioned, and in spite of her lack of sleep, everything felt so much _better_ , now, as if going to a new place would give her a new chance. The Northeastern Territories were far-- twelve hours on a plane-- and she’d only seen them in books, and on television. She wouldn’t see anyone she knew-- except for some of the people Howard worked with. Sure, people would know _her_ , but there was a freedom from expectations, when it came to interacting with strangers, that she relished the opportunity for. 

They sat in the first class cabin on the plane, and the flight attendant offered her a drink. She watched her father to take her cue-- of course Howard ordered a whiskey, so Nia took a glass of red wine, drank it much too quickly, and settled down beneath the not-quite-sufficient airplane blanket and fell immediately to sleep, finding the lull of the engines strangely comforting. 

She woke once, when the flight attendant came on the loudspeaker to warn them of turbulence, but Nia barely felt it. It was dark, then, nighttime in whatever part of the globe they were currently flying over. The darkness of the cabin made it feel smaller, more tightly wrapped around her, like a shell or a cocoon. She dozed right back off, and then next time she opened her eyes, the window shade beside her head glowed gold with morning light. She slowly pulled it up, and peered out the tiny porthole window. She could see snow-capped mountains beneath her-- craggier and darker than the ones she was used to at home-- and wispy cirrus clouds floating alongside the plane. 

She checked her watch: it was nine; which meant they’d been in the air for eleven hours. She set the watch ahead nine hours, to the local time at their destination. It was six in the morning; she was wide awake, and she smiled at how conveniently she’d managed to wake up at the proper time, after more than enough sleep. 

The airplane staff came around with coffee, fruit and croissants, and while the croissant had a slightly odd texture, more like a dinner roll than a proper croissant, Nia slathered it with butter and inhaled it before drinking three cups of coffee. 

“Stay by me,” Howard instructed, as they deboarded the plane. “Men here...don’t treat women like they do back home. It’s not safe.” 

“You say that like home’s so peachy,” Nia retorted, feeling a little queasy as she thought of Ty.. 

“Just be careful until we’re at the conference,” Howard replied. “The hotel’s a different story, it’s more civilized. But out in the city…” 

“I get it, I get it,” Nia replied. “Do you want me to hold your hand?” 

“What?” Howard asked. “No, you’re not a child.” 

Nia sighed at Howard’s utter lack of humor. 

Outside the baggage carousel, Nia looked for a driver with a placard with their name, but Howard raised a hand in the air and started forward toward a man in a rather shabby-looking but neat three-piece suit, with thinning gray hair and a pair of wireframe spectacles balanced on his nose. 

“Yinsen!” Howard called. “What are you doing here?” 

“There was a mix-up with the cars,” Yinsen answered, shrugging. “I drew the short straw.” He chuckled, and shook Howard’s hand. “And this is Antonia?” he asked, looking Nia over. 

“Nia,” Nia said. “Less of a mouthful.” 

Yinsen smiled. “The last time I saw you, you were…” He held a hand out, at waist-height. “Smaller than that. I always forget, you’re nearly the same age as my granddaughter.” 

“Nia, this is Doctor Yinsen,” Howard said, as Nia shook the man’s hand. “He’s one of our top researchers in the local facility.” 

“Hi,” Nia said. 

“The situation’s escalated since I spoke to you,” Yinsen said, beginning to walk. “I’ll fill you in on the way.” 

Nia sat in the car-- a very nice, shiny black car that contrasted sharply with the old, rusty models she saw on the road as they pulled out of the airport-- and stared out the window as her father and Dr. Yinsen talked about weapons upgrades and partisans and something about a skirmish in the hills. 

“Do we know who’s behind it?” Howard asked. 

“Can’t be sure,” Yinsen answered. “No one’s taking credit. Hydra’s the obvious answer; we’re getting too close to their central base, but...January’s people…” 

Howard sighed. “We don’t even have resolute proof that January _exists_.” 

“It’s a lot easier to believe the stories out here,” Yinsen answered, seriously. 

The city they drove through was startling. She knew that her family was wealthy, but her own scope of reference had always been seeing the civilians who lived in little brick townhouses, with postage-stamp yards only large enough for a few flower bushes. It had been seeing people leaving fast food stands with paper sacks in their hands on her way to the sit-down restaurants her family frequented with their white tablecloths and fine china. 

Here, parts of the city looked as she expected any city to look, but in other places, the homes were little more than shacks with clay walls and tin rooftops, barely large enough for a single room. Children ran barefoot in the street, which was torn up and badly in need of repair. She saw people driving _carts_ , and even the soldiers here wore uniforms with holes and patches that would have been bad enough to warrant an infraction at home. 

She wanted to shout at her father: didn’t he notice, didn’t he see? Wasn’t this the point of UNITY? Wasn’t the global government intended to make everyone more _equal_ , to make sure people had what they needed? 

She gritted her teeth, vowing to ask Howard what was going on, later, when something rapped at the window of her car. Startled, she looked up, to see a wide-eyed child peering in, jogging to keep up with them. She thought it was a boy, but she couldn’t quite be sure. 

“Howard?” Nia said. 

“Oh, for--” Howard started, and he waved the child away, shaking his head. “Get away!” he called. “We can’t help!” 

The child followed a little longer, but the car sped up as the traffic cleared, leaving him in the dust. 

“Why’d you do that?” Nia asked. “He might have needed--”

“They’re just asking for money,” Howard replied. “You can’t give money to all of them; we’d run out of cash, Nia.” 

“But...you could have given money to him,” Nia said. “He had a hole in his shirt; he--”

“He’s probably very grateful he has a shirt at all,” Howard said. “You’re being too softhearted; you sound like Maria. If you help one of them, they’ll all want help, and they’ll-- they’ll get vicious, if they think you have something to give. There are better ways to help than just handing out money.” 

Nia wasn’t sure.

They passed out of the poor area of the city, Nia feeling ill at ease as the dusty, crowded road gave way to a broad boulevard lined by emerald lawns and marble fountains. 

“Who lives here?” Nia asked, marveling at brick-walled estates grander than her family’s home, and wincing at the proximity to the slums. 

“This is where the hotel is,” Dr. Yinsen answered. They drove up a long, flower-lined drive, and stopped at a gate where a security guard in a smart uniform checked their papers before allowing them through.

Inside, fruit trees bloomed and a sparkling fountain shot water high overhead. Nia wanted to be in awe, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that an entire block of the slum had taken up less space than the front lawn of the hotel. 

They were met at the door by a young woman, not much older than Nia herself. She had short, dark hair, and pale pink skin and a military air about her. Her uniform was freshly pressed and starched stiff. 

She took Nia’s bags and led them into a giant, high-ceilinged lobby with marble floors and tall pillars. Another fountain stood in the center of the lobby, beneath a huge, domed skylight. 

“Wow,” Nia breathed. 

“This was the first building in the area commissioned by the UNITY government after the accords,” the young woman said. “The government claimed all lands previously owned by war criminals to be used for UNITY service.” 

Nia whistled low. “Guess you can do that, huh?” 

The girl frowned at her, not looking as if she knew what to make of Nia’s comment, and then held out her hand. “I’m Nancy,” she said. “I’m with General Ross’ party.” 

“Hi,” Nia said. “I, uh...you know who I am.” She shook Nancy’s hand, and watched Nancy tilt her head, consideringly. She noticed Nancy’s eyes, then, a startling green.

“I need to bring your things to your room,” Nancy said. “But I’m at your disposal.” 

“Thanks,” Nia started to say, but she was interrupted by a familiar voice. 

“Nia!” called Uncle Obie, as he walked across the lobby. 

“I didn’t know you would be here,” Nia said happily, as Obie scooped her up in a big bear hug. 

“Of course I’m here,” Obie said, looking somewhat amused. “What happened, UNITY couldn’t figure out what to do with you, so your father put your to work?” he asked, though he gave Howard a sidelong glance and Nia wondered how much Obie suspected. He had to think _something_ ; he wasn’t stupid. She gritted her teeth, wondering if she should tell him, after all-- she was enough used to her parents underestimating her, she supposed they must do it to everyone else. 

“Yeah,” she said, touching the little wings on the sides of her cap. “I’m a real adult, or something, now.”

“Well, you look very grown-up.” Obie gave her a pat on the shoulder. “We’ll have to have lunch later; you can tell me what you’re planning to do with yourself. Howard, are you going to try to recruit her?” 

“Try?” Howard asked. “She’s here, isn’t she?” 

“Listen,” Obie said to Howard. “We’ve got to talk about releasing the--”

“It’s not ready,” Howard said, his tone short, and Nia got the sense that he was cutting Obie off deliberately. 

“It’s _been_ ready, Howie,” said Obie. “We’re closing in on Hydra’s primary base of operations, and we have to do something.” 

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Howard asked. “To decide on a course of action.” 

“We could nip this in the bud.” Obie crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Mr. Stane,” said Dr. Yinsen. “With all due respect, we don’t know how many civilians are on their base; we need more intelligence before we--”

“They’re _Hydra_ ,” Obie objected. “We’ve been trying to smoke them out since the war. I say, if a chance presents itself--” 

“I get your eagerness to kill Nazis,” Howard said. “I really do. But speaking as somebody who _did_ kill Nazis in the war, you’ve still got to step back and think about how to do it.” 

Nia watched Howard’s face turn grim, his eyes go far away, and she knew he was thinking about the war. She bit her lip.

Obie, too, seemed to notice the change in Howard’s demeanor, and clapped Howard on the back, giving him a placating look. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll discuss it later. You two need to get settled in, after all.” 

They left Obie, but Yinsen walked to an elevator with shining golden doors and floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the walls, and an _attendant_ who pushed the buttons.

“I’m concerned,” Yinsen said, when they were out of Obie’s earshot. “That UNITY is going to make a decision that doesn’t take into consideration that this current generation of Hydra is gaining support from locals because of the steep inequities that UNITY has yet to correct. Add the rumors of men like January--” 

“January’s a legend,” Howard insisted again. “We’d know if he were real.” 

“There are dissidents fighting in his name, real or not,” Yinsen answered. “With men like your friend--”

“Obie’s harmless,” Howard said, waving away Yinsen’s remarks with a hand. “He’s been working for me since he was a kid. He’s just overeager; that’s all. He wants to be a hero. He’ll listen to sense.”

“And Osborn?” Yinsen asked. 

Howard shrugged. “Osborn’s not here; we don’t have to consider his opinions.” 

“That’s only a temporary solution,” said Yinsen. “You saw those slums.”

“Because you drove me through them,” Howard answered, raising an eyebrow. 

And that was when Nia realized that there hadn’t been a problem with the car service, after all. 

She didn’t have an opportunity to find out more, as they were let off at their floor, on a balcony that overlooked the lobby. From this height, everything below sparkled in the sun. Nia felt her breath leave her chest, and stepped to the railing, entranced, leaning over as far as she dared. Something in her, a tickle in her shoulders, made her want to spread her arms and leap, as if there were a vestige of some ancient avian ancestor that had been slumbering quietly inside her, wakened by the opportunity to fly. She caught herself leaning further, and stepped back, breaking the spell. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Yinsen asked.

“It makes me wish I had wings,” Nia admitted. 

“Well,” Yinsen said. “Your father says you’re quite the young engineer. I don’t imagine that would be impossible.” 

Nia grinned, and spread her arms out, thinking about the airplane wings, about where she would put the power source, if she could build herself a set of her own. 

She walked into her room. It was palatial, twice the size of her bedroom at home, and had an enormous bed at the center, with a thick down coverlet, and a bathroom with two sinks and a bathtub large enough that Nia suspected she could swim in it. The carpet was rich and plush; the windows took up an entire wall, and were hung with rich, shimmering draperies. 

She peeked out of them and saw a wide expanse of landscaped grass and trees-- a full golf course. 

“Wow,” she murmured. 

There was a knock at her door, and she went to answer it-- seeing the tiny glass peephole, she got up on her tiptoes to peek through it, although of course it was her father. 

She opened the door. 

Howard rubbed at his chin. “I’m right next door,” he said. “To your left. Put something on that’s suitable for lunch, and for meetings; you’ll be accompanying me today.” 

“Lunch and-- oh!” Nia exclaimed, as she recalled her mother’s instructions the day before. “Clothes.” She looked around the room, and walked to the closet-- two mirrored double-doors that slid open to reveal a rack full of brand new clothing. She took a breath, reaching out with one hand to touch the fabric of the nearest dress. 

“I’ll...I’ll find something,” she said, shutting her eyes as she brushed the back of her hand against the impossibly soft silk. 

She pored through the rack with growing delight-- the clothing was far nicer, far more sophisticated than anything she’d worn at home, and all, as Maria promised, in beautiful, bright colors. 

She held up a magnificent, sparkling blue cocktail dress that set off the gold and copper tones of her skin to perfection, and matched her eyes. She wondered, for a moment, as she bit her lip and stared into the mirror, if Howard would be furious if she wore a cocktail dress to an important government meeting and feigned naivety over fashion. 

Sighing, she put the blue dress away and found something more suitable-- a more conservative, tailored green dress with a cardigan in deeper green, and a pair of plain, respectable-looking brown flats. 

She took a quick shower, lamenting that she didn’t have time to luxuriate in the gigantic tub, dressed, and went to meet her father. 

The meetings, as expected, were boring, and the only people Nia knew were Howard, Obie, and now Dr. Yinsen, who kept giving her encouraging little smiles. She sat in the back of the room, while her father and his fellow science officials sat at a table at the front, microphones at the ready, taking questions from a series of other people-- other government workers, military leaders, scientists...Nia had brought along a notebook, and started working out her plan for the wings Dr. Yinsen had put into her head. 

Slowly, though, she found herself sketching the prototype for the prosthetic heart her mother had been working on when she left, and then, she started filling in a figure around it-- a figure with a broad chest and narrow waist, a square jaw and straight nose....she did it absently, without thinking, and was startled when she looked down, and, in spite of the fact that she wasn’t the best portraitist, plainly recognized it as Steve, the prosthesis filling in the spot where his scar marked his chest. 

“Fuck you, Steve,” she murmured at the paper, and started filling in a star shape around the prosthesis. 

Nancy found her again, and slipped into the seat beside her, and Nia put a hand over the picture of the half-naked man in her sketchbook, half embarrassed, half worried. She felt guilty, wondering if Nancy thought she didn’t like her, but she didn’t want anyone to ask questions. Finally, she turned the page and lowered the notebook, sketching more innocuous things: puppies, dress designs, but, when she gave Nancy a sidelong glance, she saw that Nancy’s attention was entirely on the debate at the front of the room. 

The atmosphere around her was turning heated; the men at the table were arguing amongst each other.

“Everyone on this board knows you’ve been working on--” said a man in a military uniform-- one she recognized from photographs and press conferences, but had never met, a man who was all hard edges, craggy face, thick eyebrows and grey at his temples. 

“With all due respect, General Ross,” Howard said, raising an eyebrow. “You of all people should have some idea what happens when technology is tested in the field before its time.” 

“With all due respect, Mr. Stark,” General Ross argued back, “the technology would have been perfected if _someone_ had been able to pick themselves up out of a drunken stupor.” 

Nia straightened up in her chair, smacking her hands down against the little desk in front of her seat. She’d never felt protective of her father before, and now-- in spite of the fact that she _knew_ , she remembered the times when he was too drunk to work, when he’d shut himself in his lab and muttered things that made no sense, when the way he spoke to Nia made her frightened to be near him-- she wanted to get up and march down to the front of the room and defend Howard against this man.

Howard, though, rolled his eyes. “If I _recall_ ,” he said. “I was sober enough to tell you not to use it on a _human test subject._ ” 

“Be that as it may,” said another man. “You do owe us a progress report on the--”

“Stalled out,” Howard answered. “That’s your progress report. Stalled out, and too unstable to use as a weapon, without risking the lives of good UNITY soldiers.” 

“I thought we’d found full schematics in the Hydra laboratories,” said a woman in the front row. 

“Mr. Stark is concerned,” Obie put in. “And I understand his concern. Let’s not all forget what happened the last time he was put in charge of rebuilding something from Hydra schematics.” 

Obie said it kindly, defensively, looking loyally up at Howard, but the response in the room was a rising murmur.

“Are you saying Mr. Stark is the wrong man for the job?” asked General Ross.

“Of course not!” Obie objected. “He’s the foremost nuclear engineer we have; you can’t--” 

“What he’s _saying_ ,” Howard snapped, getting to his feet. “Is that the last time I did this, I was _personally_ responsible for the deaths of _hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women_. You want that weight on your heads, ladies and gentlemen?” 

Nia looked up at her father, saw the rage in his eyes, the way his forehead creased, the ways his lips curled down, and she bit her lip. 

“You want to _know_ why I wasn’t sober enough to help with your little radiation experiment, General?” Howard asked. “Because I laid my ethics down to bed and took a weapon design from the mind of a madman who was _too evil for the goddamn Nazis_ and put it in the world. And I should have known what it would do. Steve Rogers laid down his _life_ to stop those bombs, and I didn’t pay any heed to his sacrifice. You want to go out there and fight these crummy little insurgents that are a mere shadow of what Hydra was? You do it with my blessing. But we are _not_ unleashing another weapon like that on human beings.” 

Nia sat, stunned. This was her father, this was the man who got on the radio and told everyone that UNITY was the greatest invention of the modern age, this was the man who said, in public, that anyone who dared threaten the security of the new world order would be met with force that would crush them. She’d known him for eighteen years, and this was the first taste she’d had that maybe there was something else beneath that, that maybe it was all for show. 

That maybe he actually _was_ a leader and not just a figurehead. 

And now, seeing this, she finally began to understand what her mother might have seen in him. 

But at the front of the room, there were half a dozen people on their feet, and Obie and Howard were talking heatedly between each other, and now Ross was shouting at them both, and Howard threw up his hands and walked out of the room.

“Nia?” asked Nancy. “Nia, are you okay?” 

Nia gathered up her notebook, clutched it to her chest, and ran after her father.

“Dad!” she shouted across the lobby. He didn’t turn around, but he slowed his hasty walk. 

“Dad,” she repeated, as she reached him. “Dad, what you said in there--”

“It was a long time ago,” Howard answered. 

“The nuclear bombs,” Nia said, biting her lip. “The ones you used to end the war. The ones you used to convince the rest of the world to join UNITY.” 

“Good guess, Kiddo,” said Howard, and he glanced at her, then looked away. “Come on, Nia,” he said, after a moment. “We’re going upstairs.” 

Nia followed Howard into his hotel room, which was like a mirror image of her hotel room, almost identical, but flip-flopped, with the bed and the bathroom on opposite walls. Howard sat down on the edge of the foot of his bed, and rubbed his hand over his forehead, sighing helplessly.

“I--” Nia took a deep breath. “I’m glad you said what you said down there. That’s what I was trying to say. You-- I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you want to hear, but Maria would be proud.” 

Howard looked up at her, and smiled weakly, then raised a hand, as if to wave away the compliment. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I...want you to take something.” 

Nia hesitated. “Uh. Okay,” she replied, and she stood in front of him, shifting from foot to foot. “This,” he said, holding out a tiny metal capsule. 

She took it, and turned it around in her hands. “What is it?” she asked. 

“Antonium,” said Howard. 

Nia snorted, as she clasped her fingers around the capsule. “You’re making that up.” 

“Nope,” Howard answered, shaking his head. “You synthesize a new element, you get to name it after your only child. That’s how it works.” 

“Oh,” Nia said, and she looked down at the capsule again, with more interest. “ _Howard._ ” 

“It’s the only sample,” he said. “It’s the element that Hydra was using in their weapons. We never-- it took me this long to recreate it. And that little tube-- contains enough to power an entire city for a decade.” 

“And you--” She watched her father now, mesmerized. 

Howard scrubbed at his hair with his hand. “Do you know why we gave you such a stuffy old-ladies’ name?” he asked. “Do you know what it means?” 

Nia shook her head. “I thought it was because one of you had an ancestor named Anthony or Antonio or something.” 

“Put that away,” Howard instructed. “Keep it on you; don’t let it out of your sight. It means ‘priceless.’” 

Nia obeyed her father’s instruction, swallowing as her throat went dry. “What do you want me to do with it?” she asked. 

“Well,” Howard said. “You saw how things were going down there. If they know I’ve actually synthesized the element, they’re not going to let up; they’re going to want it. They’re going to try to weaponize it. And if it can power a city for ten years, imagine what it could do if--” 

“I get it,” Nia said. She patted her pocket. “I’ll put it on a chain, turn it into a necklace.” She grinned. “If I paint some hearts on it they’ll think it’s some dopey teenager jewelry; they won’t give it a second look.” 

Howard nodded. “I’ve got a design for a...for a reactor,” he said. “A self-sustaining reactor. Tandem fission and fusion. The cycles sustain the core, and--” 

“Fusion?” Nia asked. “Like, _controlled_ fusion? That’s not _possible_.” 

“Not yet,” Howard answered, shaking his head. He got up from the bed, walked to the little desk in the corner of the room, and picked up a folder, which he handed to her “But that’s the trick of the antonium. It fuses cool, Nia. It _fuses cool_. The real issue is finding a way to displace the plasma byproduct that’s a side-effect of the process. I told UNITY I needed another pair of hands on the project if they wanted--” 

Nia opened the folder, but barely had time to glance at the schematics before she stopped, looked up at her father, and tried to speak. 

It took her two attempts to get the words out of her mouth. “They were going to assign me to the project.” 

“And I knew it wasn’t going anywhere good,” Howard said, shaking his head. He picked at a gap in his teeth, as if he had a piece of food stuck between them. “I knew they didn’t want an electrical source, they wanted a weapon, they wanted a bigger, better version of the bombs we dropped to end the war, and I went through that once on my own. They-- none of them understand the toll it takes. You can’t live with yourself. You can’t wake up in the morning.”

Nia nodded. She looked down, admiring her father’s elegant design, poring over his calculations. “I would have loved this,” she said, sadly. “Working on it for the right reasons. Why didn’t you ever-- you never _told_ me any of this, Howard.” 

“Well, at first you were too young,” Howard answered. “And then I was a shitty father. I didn’t want to saddle you with my ghosts.” 

“Sure,” Nia said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s not tell our daughter about the element named after her or the war hero in the walk-in freezer in the basement.” 

“Steve died trying to protect the world from the same weapons I used against it,” Howard said, wistfully. “You would think the least I could do is save him.” 

Howard laughed, a hollow, sad laugh, that put Nia at unease. 

“Everything I’ve ever tried to do, Nia; it’s all gone wrong. I can’t let that happen with this.” 

“Do you want me to help?” Nia asked, as she thumbed through the papers. “No one needs to know.”

“I want you to memorize those diagrams,” Howard replied. “And then destroy them. We’re not ready for this, not now. I’ll tell them there’s been a setback in my research, that something was missing.” 

“They’ll know you’re lying,” Nia pointed out. 

“That may be,” Howard answered with a shrug. “But what are they going to do about it?” 

Nia shut the folder, slid it inside her notebook. “I’m gonna...take this to my room,” she said. “I suppose you don’t want me to tell anyone about this, either?” 

“No one but your mother,” Howard answered, and he gave her a stern look, the kind that said he meant it. “If you need to trust another person, tell Jarvis. No one else. Especially not your uncle.” 

Nia nodded and started for the door. Just before she reached for the knob, she stopped, took a breath, and looked over her shoulder. “Dad?” she asked. “Thanks.” 

“For what?” Howard asked. 

“I don’t know, maybe for naming me after the rarest and most precious thing in the world,” Nia said, suddenly flustered. She hadn’t expected to have to explain. She looked down at the floor, shrugging. 

“Well, you’ve got that the wrong way around, now,” Howard answered. “I named it after the rarest and most precious thing in the world.” 

Nia felt her throat go tight, and she reached for the doorknob, deciding that she _definitely_ had had enough of crying in front of people to last her a lifetime. 

She opened the door and nearly smacked directly into Obie, who was standing with a hand raised, about to knock. 

She wondered, suddenly, how thick the doors were, how soundproof the walls. 

“Nia!” Obie exclaimed. “Your father’s in?” 

“He’s all yours,” Nia replied, grinning tightly, as she ducked out of the way and back to her own room.

The papers hadn’t been difficult to memorize, and she’d laughed as she’d noticed that the quadruple-chamber design, the ducts to siphon off the plasma away from the core...it all resembled Maria’s prosthetic heart, the one she had been helping Maria with at home. 

“You two are more similar than you think,” she said to herself, as she opened up her notebook and looked at the blueprints next to her sketch. She tapped a finger absently over her ink drawing of Steve’s face, and then closed the book again, taking the reactor designs into the bathroom. 

This time, she filled the enormous bathtub. With bubbles.

She climbed into the steamy bath, bringing her father’s folder with her, and submerged the papers under nearly-scalding hot water until all the ink ran off, until the fibers of the paper came apart and turned into pulpy mush, and then she mashed them all into a cube, which she went about making very precise. She found the shaping of the paper into a three-dimensional object somehow satisfying, and she was certain, now, that the schema were lost to everyone but her. 

By now, her fingers were beginning to prune, and she was feeling a bit sleepy from all the heat, even as the bathwater began to cool, so she got out, her skin all rosy and tender, and got dressed for dinner. 

In the blue cocktail dress. 

She put her hair up in a twist, as best she could, the way Carol had showed her how, and found matching earrings in a drawer in the hotel room dresser. She was still hopeless with makeup, but she _tried,_ , dusting some powder on her face and some deep, smoky shadow on her eyes. She could never figure out which lipstick was right for her skin tone; all of Carol’s were too light and too pink on her, so she put on a coating of lip gloss and called it a day, looking in the mirror and deciding that the end result was not unsatisfactory. 

She put on the pair of blue shoes that were in the closet-- higher than any shoes she normally wore, with tiny spindles for heels, and she wobbled a little as she got her bearings. She twisted a bit of wire around the antonium capsule, then strung it on a chain from another necklace, and hung it around her neck. The metal was cool and smooth against her sternum, and it looked enough like a very modern piece of jewelry that Nia was satisfied it wouldn’t draw too much attention. 

She gave herself one last look in the mirror to steel herself. “Well, Stark,” she said, matter-of-fact, “you’re not exactly _pretty_ , but you’re not going to turn anybody to stone.” 

She clutched at her little purse that had her hotel room key and her lipgloss in it, and wished Jim were there. 

“Yet,” she added, and left the room. 

The minute she stepped out of the elevator, she regretted the dress. 

Flashbulbs went off in her eyes, and, startled, she put her purse up to shield her vision from the light. 

“Miss Stark!” shouted a reporter, shoving a microphone near her mouth. 

“I’m on my way to dinner,” she said, irritably. 

“Miss Stark, does your presence here mean you’re working for your father?” asked another.

“I’m having _dinner_ with my father,” Nia replied. 

“Is there any truth to the rumor that your assignment was postponed because of a quarrel between your parents?”

Nia threw her hands up. “Ask my parents,” she retorted. “They’re too busy quarreling to tell me anything.” 

A journalist in the front, a woman with pale skin and brown hair, chuckled at the answer, and then grinned, and gave Nia a thumbs-up, and the laughter filled Nia with renewed confidence, and she got into the spirit of the thing, rattling off sarcastic answer after sarcastic answer, and, after a few questions, felt emboldened to pose for the cameras, trying to mimic the looks of the models in Carol’s magazines-- blowing a kiss over her shoulder, standing with one hand on her hip. 

This was _so much better_ than graduation. She actually felt glamorous.

But then a familiar voice shocked her out of her game of celebrity. 

“Nia.”

She froze, and didn’t turn around, “I’m-- I’m sorry,” she said to the reporter who had just asked her a question about her opinion on the recent rise in Hydra insurgents. “Could you please repeat the--”

“ _Nia_.” 

Fingertips caught at the nape of her neck, and then Ty’s lips were on her cheek, and she froze. 

“It’s good to see you, too,” Ty said. 

She tried to dig her elbow into his side surreptitiously, suddenly regretting the blue dress. “What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to sound casual, not as if she were interrogating him. 

Ty beamed, his beautiful television-star grin. “Public relations,” he said. “Ladies and gents, I’m here on behalf of UNITY to answer any of your questions about the conference.” 

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Nia said. 

“Surprise,” Ty replied, as he pointed to a reporter. 

“Mr. Stone, is there any truth to the rumor that you and Miss Stark are engaged to be married?” 

Ty chuckled. 

“No,” Nia blurted, and she waved her left hand in the air. “If we are, no one told me about it.” 

“Well, Nia,” Ty said, and he turned to face her, smiling deviously, a wicked glint in his eyes. 

She trembled, knock-kneed in her too-high shoes, and Ty took a long look at her, his eyes focusing on the low neckline of her dress. 

She now _definitely_ regretted wearing it. “You planned this,” she murmured. “The reporters, the--” 

Ty dropped to one knee and reached a hand in his pocket. The cameras went off like fireworks on V-Day, and the reporters were all giddy with excitement, all but the one brunette woman, who had lowered her microphone and was looking on with a cold, furious expression. 

“Don’t you dare,” Nia whispered, feeling grateful for that one reporter, as if her reaction meant Nia wasn’t so unreasonable, after all. “Don’t you--”

“Miss Stark!” called a voice-- a young woman’s voice, shouting over the crowd of journalists. 

_Nancy_.

She took the interruption as an excuse to break eye contact with Ty, to turn and look for the other girl.

“Miss Stark!” 

Nancy was still dressed in a UNITY uniform, with a _very_ military air about her, from the way she stood straight at attention with her hands folded behind her back. 

“Yes?” Nia asked.

“Your father is looking for you, if you have a moment? He says it’s urgent.” 

Nia shot a glare at Ty. “Of course,” she said. “Of course; I’m coming. Can you take me to him?” she added, hoping that the other girl’s company would keep Ty at bay. 

Nancy tossed her a salute with perfect form and the heel-click of a servicewoman, and Nia felt the tension melt out of her shoulders with relief as she hopped through the circle of journalists to join her savior. 

Nia hurried after Nancy, her heels clicking on the marble floor of the lobby. They walked the entire length of the expansive room, and then outside, onto a patio lit with bright globes that seemed to float in midair. Nia tilted her head to watch them, curiously, trying to figure out how they were suspended, when she realized that the patio was empty, apart from her and her escort. 

“Where’s Howard?” she asked.

“Inside,” said Nancy. “You looked traumatized, so I thought I’d rescue you.” 

“Thanks,” Nia said, feeling shy, but Nancy grinned back at her. 

“That guy’s a real you-know-what, isn’t he?” Nancy asked. 

Nia snorted. “They don’t make words dirty enough to describe him.” 

“I know a few of those.” Nancy’s eyes danced-- they were bright, vivid green. "You okay?" She asked. "You want me to stick around till he's gone?"

Nia winced. "He won't be gone," she said. "He somehow managed to follow me from New York; he's not going to let the distance of a few hotel rooms get in the way."

She wanted to run, hide, go back to her room, refill the tub, and submerge herself up to her ears. "So you’re here working for General Ross?" She asked Nancy.

"In a manner of speaking," said the other girl. "I'm on a fact-finding mission."

"Oh?" Nia asked, and it felt as if the capsule against her chest became a little bit warmer at Nancy's admission. 

"I'm meant to find out which of the officials here are in support of waging war against the insurgents, and which would prefer a peaceful solution. It’s pretty obvious which side your--"

But Nancy didn't finish her sentence. Instead, her eyes grew wide, and she screamed. 

The scream gave Nia just enough time to whirl around, to keep the man behind her from clapping a cloth-- that stank of chloroform-- over her mouth and nose. He was dressed in green, a sickly, poisonous green.

Nia reacted quickly, jabbing her elbow into the man's middle, but her shoes wobbled, barely supporting her. She snatched them off her feet, brandishing the heels like weapons. 

Behind her, Nancy had drawn her service pistol, pointing it at the assailant with trembling hands. "St--stop!" She stammered. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

But another green-clad figure knocked Nancy to the ground. The gun went off harmlessly, and clattered to the patio, even as Nancy yelled again. 

"Help!" She shouted. "Oh, God, help!" 

Their shouts had drawn the attention of the hotel guests inside, and Nia saw her opportunity as all the wealthy and important men and women in their suits and ties, their dresses and uniforms, turned to see the commotion. She slammed herself into the window at full force. The glass didn't shatter, but cracked in fine spiderwebs in its frame, and she screamed for help. 

The two attackers were now on her-- martial arts had never held her interest, and she wished now that it had, as they were both much larger, much stronger, and one of them held her down and tried to cover her mouth. 

She screamed again, banging at the window over and over, the glass starting to give way.

“Let her go!” snarled a man’s voice. She looked up-- it was Dr. Yinsen, who was aiming a gun at her captor. 

“Take him out,” one of the attackers whispered to the other.

Nancy, groaning, pushed herself up from the patio just as one of the assailants knocked the gun from Yinsen’s hands and shoved him down to the ground.

“Wait!” she shouted. “Do you not know who that is? That’s Doctor Ho Yinsen; he’s a _populist_ ; he’s on your side; you--” 

The man in green shot Nancy in the head. 

Nia had never seen someone shot up close before; she’d only seen shootings on film, in the news. There was less blood than she expected, just a shocked look on Nancy’s face, and then the girl collapsed, slowly. 

Nia screamed. Something smacked her upside the head, and she wondered if she’d been shot. She could hear the commotion behind her-- surely the other hotel guests, Obie, her father, even Ty, must be coming for her. The man who held her started dragging her away, toward the expansive lawn behind the hotel. 

“Better take him, too,” The one said to the other, nodding at Yinsen. 

Her vision faded. 

She had the faint memory of being carried, and then of rumbling beneath her, and voices-- two men, and a woman, and then nothing, nothing, darkness, nothing, followed by vivid dreams rich in detail: sights and sounds and scents and contact all heightened to surreality. 

She was sinking, in a viscous fluid, but it was transparent, and when she opened her eyes, she could see...though the fluid was filling her nose and ears and throat, surrounding her with intense pressure, somehow she didn’t drown, wasn’t suffocated by it. She saw a light above her, and tried to move her arms, tried to swim toward it, but when she did, a dark silhouette blocked her view-- she reached up, grabbing hold of whatever it was that was blocking her way to the surface. 

Her touch dragged it down...and then she saw hair, limbs, the blue of a uniform, a glassy-eyed expressionless stare, and threads of crimson flowing from the hole in the center of the forehead. 

Nancy.

She tugged Nancy down farther, swam past the girl’s corpse, feeling a sharp pang of guilt as she broke the surface and wiped the thick liquid from her eyes and face. 

She was alone, bobbing on the surface of an enormous sea that stretched to the horizon in all directions, the sky pink and burning overhead. She kept herself afloat by treading water, staring up at the hot sun. 

For a moment, she was somewhere else. She was in pain; she saw blurry faces hovering over her, and they were talking about something...she made out a few words, made out the phrase, “unorthodox,” followed by, “can’t agree with this course of action,” and finally, ”have to respond,” before she found herself back in the ocean. 

But this time a figure, dressed in a blue UNITY uniform, plunged into the sea beside her, hard and fast, from an impossible height, and sank like a stone. 

Nia dove, swimming back through that fluid, which became thicker and thicker, like jelly, as she fought against it, and finally, with an enormous exertion, caught the person by the back of their collar, and heaved them up to the surface. 

She had to hold onto them, to keep them afloat, and she turned them to face her, so she could clear the fluid out of their mouth, too. 

“Steve,” she murmured, seeing his face. She pressed a hand to his cheek, tried to wipe out his ears and-- with a bit of hesitation-- his nostrils. “Come on, Steve. Why won’t you wake up? We’re all waiting for you to wake up,” she said. 

Her voice echoed, “wake up, wake up, wake up,” until it was ringing in her ears, and it wouldn’t go away, and Steve was still limp in her arms. 

“WAKE UP!” she shouted. The echoes doubled, now, crescendoing over each other, louder and louder instead of fading away. 

And then Steve blinked, and looked up at her, and her heart began to hum in her chest, and she squeezed him in her joy, tightly, like a child with a stuffed toy. 

But her voice, echoing, didn’t disappear, and she didn’t know why, not here, not with Steve awake. 

Something beeped. 

Steve reached up and touched her face, very close, and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead, he whispered to her. 

“Wake up.” 

“Wake up,” said another voice, one she couldn’t quite place, and now, she slowly returned to consciousness, her eyes still shuttered. 

She felt numb; she couldn’t move her hands. There was a slow, steady beeping sound, and the electrical whir of a fan. 

“Why can’t I--” 

It hurt to speak; her head pounded, but everything below her neck had no feeling at all. 

“It’s anaesthesia,” said a kind voice, one she recognized. 

“Doctor Yinsen?” she asked. 

“You’re going to feel like that for a while.” 

She forced her eyelids open and came face to face with a yellow sheet, cutting off her view from the rest of her body. The rest of the room was blurry-- she saw a man-shaped figure which she suspected must be Doctor Yinsen, but not much else. 

“What happened to me?” she asked. “Where are we?” 

“As far as I can tell,” said Doctor Yinsen. “We’re in the Hydra base. You…” He went quiet. His face was ashen; his expression grim. “You were knocked out. Something’s happened to you, but I think it would be best for you to hear it from the doctors.” 

“You’re a doctor,” Nia pointed out. 

“The doctors who operated on you,” Yinsen explained. 

“What happened to Nancy?” Nia asked. 

“The other girl?” Yinsen paused again. “I don’t know. They left her on the ground.”

“They shot her,” Nia said. “They...they killed her.” Her throat was hoarse, and every word was effort. “Water?” she asked. 

“Not until the anaesthetic wears off,” said Yinsen. “And my hands are still tied. I’m not sure how much I can do. I’m sorry, Nia.” 

She smiled weakly. “ _I’m_ sorry,” she said. “I...thanks. I...throat hurts. Better shut up.” 

She stopped speaking then, and Yinsen moved out of her immediate field of vision. 

She stared at the yellow sheet; it made her feel as if she were a floating head, as if there were nothing below it. She bit her lip, and, out of nowhere, wondered what had happened to her blue cocktail dress.

She laughed, bitterly, unsure why, of all the things to come to her, that was it, but it opened the floodgates of worries: what had happened to the other people at the hotel? Did her parents know what had happened to her? Did they know where she was? Would she see them again? And her friends; she wanted her friends. She wanted Jim there to pat her shoulder and tell her it would be fine; she wanted Carol to find something about her deserving of a compliment. She half-wanted Ty there; even as angry as she was at him, he wasn’t as terrifying as _this_. Maybe she could scream at him; maybe it would make her feel better.

She tried to count the number of times in the past few days when she’d thought her life could get no worse, but this-- this, now-- this was the absolute bottom, the depth. 

She heard a door open, and then footsteps, but she couldn't see past the yellow sheet. 

"Good to see you awake, Miss Stark," said a masculine voice. 

" _Cerrera_ -Stark,” she muttered. “I'd say the same, but I can't see you at all," Nia finished, immediately regretting the attempt to be clever when her throat burned. 

The man in question stepped forward, past the sheet. He was dressed in surgical scrubs, rubber gloves on his hands, and she supposed she should be relieved that the conditions were at least sanitary, but he wore a plastic cap over his hair, and a surgical mask and pair of sunglasses obscured his face, and even as her vision was slowly improving, the only things she could identify about him were that he was tall, and white.

"Hello, my dear," he said, and she felt the impulse, as the rage rose in her head, to tell him she wasn't his dear, but she managed to keep her mouth shut this time. 

He reached for her head, tilted it one way, and then the other, shone a light in her eyes, and then applied pressure to her jaw, so her mouth opened against her will.

"Tongue out," he ordered. 

She did as she was told, and he shone the light down her throat, then put his fingers to her pulse point and counted, bobbing his head along as he mouthed numbers silently.

"Good, good," he said. "Pulse is a little lower than I'd like, but that's to be expected. Doctor Yinsen, if you would be so kind as to assist?" 

"You must know I can't approve of what you've done." 

"I hardly think that's reason enough you would let any harm come to the child," said the surgeon. 

"You will be caught," Yinsen warned. "You'll be caught and executed. Your cause--"

"Cut off one head and two will take its place," the surgeon answered, and chuckled maliciously. 

"What do you want?" Nia asked. She recognized the motto, recognized it from history books about Hydra and the Last War, but she couldn't quite bring herself to believe that anyone would align themselves with a group borne of genocidal ideologies. 

The doctor turned to her. "You," he said, "are a precious gem. We are going to hold you ransom, and return you when our demands are met."

Nia's breath hitched. There was a conversation she had had, more than once, with Howard, about the dangers of being the child of a powerful government official, of the way she might be hurt or taken advantage of, and here it was, something she'd always laughed off, never perceived as a palpable threat. 

“UNITY won't negotiate with terrorists, even if it means my life," she answered, as coldly, as stoically as she could. 

She wanted to cry. She knew every word of what she said was true, and it ached. Whatever Howard might want, ransom was off the table. UNITY had let hostages die before, and they couldn't make an exception for anyone. 

Still, she thought, selfishly, they had made an exception for her assignment; maybe, maybe she was important enough to save. 

She knew she wasn’t, though. She hadn’t done anything of note; she might be the daughter of important people, but she was barely out of the Academy; she had no accomplishments of her own to her name. 

At least, she thought to herself, at least she knew she was important enough to _Howard_. The knowledge, something she had never been quite sure of, made her eyes well up with tears, and her throat tightened. 

“My father won’t bite. He won’t give in.” 

The doctor nodded. “That may be,” he agreed. “But our offer isn’t for your father. It’s for your mother.” 

“Wh--” Nia nearly choked. “What--” 

“Show her,” the doctor said. 

“Show who what?” Nia asked, looking around for another person, someone apart from the surgeon and Dr. Yinsen.

But then the surgeon lifted his shirt-- displaying not a human torso, but a wide, blank screen, that blinked to life, first with static, then with an image, a blurry human face.

Nia gasped, then looked up at the surgeon's face, and back to his middle again. It was then that she realized he wasn't only covered up for sanitary purposes...he was entirely electronic. 

“I want to see her,” said a female voice, fierce and demanding. “I’m not listening to anything you say until I see my daughter.” 

“ _Maria_?” Nia asked. 

Her mother’s face slowly resolved from the blur, anguished and tight, dark eyes bright and full of rage. 

"Nia?" Maria said sharply. "Nia, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Nia said. "I mean, not fine-fine...but yes. I'm alive."

"Satisfied?" Asked the robotic man. 

"Not half," Maria answered. "Nia, what's Planck's Constant?"

“Six point six two six oh seven oh oh four oh times ten to the negative thirty-fourth joules per second,” Nia answered. 

Maria was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “What do you want?” she asked. 

The robotic man chuckled. Knowing he was a machine made it eerie, to hear it laugh, and Nia wondered if he were a sort of artificial intelligence, or if someone was controlling him, controlling what he said and did. 

“We will provide passage,” he said. “For you to come to an undisclosed location. One of our leaders is in need of medical assistance. You will give him the required aid, and we will release your daughter.” 

“How will I guarantee my own safety?” Maria asked. 

“You have my word,” said the robotic man. “After all, it would be foolishness to harm one of the world’s foremost surgeons, one of our greatest minds.” 

Nia shuddered. She didn’t want her mother with these people, under any circumstances. “Don’t agree, Mom,” she said tensely, shaking her head. 

“What about my daughter?” Maria asked. 

“You’ll get her back when the surgery is completed.” 

“Put her on an airplane now,” Maria replied. “And I’ll come do whatever it is you want.” 

“Oh, Dr. Cerrera,” said the robotic man. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” 

Maria’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?” she demanded. Her voice was slow, colder than her mother had ever sounded before. 

The robotic man disappeared behind the curtain, and then reappeared with a transparent box, a box that had tubes and wires running in and out of it. He set it down on the small table next to Nia’s bed, just between Nia and the screen in his chest, obscuring her vision of her mother. 

The organ inside was vivid, red and blue and shining, and Nia watched it expand and contract, pumping away as if there were still blood passing through it.

Nia suddenly felt lightheaded, her brain stopped processing in words; everything was raw impulse with no way to verbalize it. 

She wasn’t seeing this; she couldn’t be seeing this. It wasn’t possible; it wasn’t possible for her to still be alive if--

“Because,” said the robotic man. “We’re not holding your daughter ransom. We’re holding her heart.”

And Nia’s world was wiped clean; everything went white.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you've liked the fic and want to share it, it has a [tumblr post here](http://teaberryblue.tumblr.com/post/134988068864/atomic-heart-story-by-teaberryblue-art-by)
> 
>  
> 
> notes on dubious consent (minor spoiler)  
> There are some scenes with elements that might qualify as dubious consent. They are between Nia/Tony and Tiberius Stone and are not presented positively.
> 
> notes on explicit content  
> There is some sexually explicit description but it is a minor part of the story. It is mostly somewhat unpleasant in context. 
> 
> notes on seizures  
> The seizures depicted in this story are atonic seizures which do not pose a severe threat to the person suffering them.
> 
> notes on medical trauma, violence, and gore  
> This story involves a lot of all three of those and they are somewhat graphically depicted at points in the story. There is a lot of blood, and the biggest elements of body horror/medical trauma are the removal of a human heart, and the amputation of a limb, though there are others as well.
> 
> notes on character death  
> A *lot* of characters die in this. If you need to know who dies or how they die, please email me at teaberryblue at gmail dot com and I will be happy to fill you in.


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